Exceptions to Contiguous Area Filter

[WilliamsTravis]

Why this feature is necessary:
Working on a Puerto Rico analysis, we noticed that our road dataset was bisecting areas of available land that were then removed by the minimum contiguous area filter. Comparing the road dataset to satellite images, we noticed that most roads appeared to be very small dirt roads that were very unlikely to affect the development of a plant and shouldn't apply to the filter. I expect there will be many more instances of this sort of thing in future runs.

A possible solution is:
We provide an optional list of excepted layers from the contiguous area filter in the supply-curve-aggregation step. The composite exclusion step would compile all of the non-excepted layers, apply the area filter to the output of that step, then combine it with the excepted layers.

I have considered the following alternatives:
To get around this, I created a composite exclusion layer of all exclusions except roads but with the area filter, uploaded that to the exclusion HDF5 file, then used that in the supply-curve-aggregation exclusion dictionary with roads added in separately and no area filter. This works, but requires many steps, particularly when adjusting the exclusion dictionary.

Additional context
This is just a nice to have for now, but I can see it being very useful in the future since I've learned that the area filter is often applied too broadly.

Urgency / Timeframe
Not urgent at all, I have implemented a work around.

[ppinchuk]

I spent some time looking into this. Looks like the implementation part is not trivial, but also not terribly difficult.
The testing, however, will take some work. I would estimate 5-10 hours of development time (i.e. ~$1-2k) to ensure we test the change thoroughly enough. May be best to sneak this one is next time a project demands this functionality.

[WilliamsTravis]

Okay, that sounds good, and yes that's exactly what I was thinking. Will ping you next time we need this, thanks.

[WilliamsTravis]

Task number: reV Maintenance GDOP.12495.31.01.01