GeoBase

A sovereign geospatial baseline platform for Tribal Nations.

GeoBase is an interchangeable geospatial platform and a development spine. It provides a baseline of terrain, elevation, and surface types (the T0 layer), imports GeoPackage/shapefile layer packages (LandCover, Flood projections, Responsible Siting, …), hosts SoLO (Sovereign Layer Orchestrator) mini-apps such as RStep, and enforces the Tiered Sovereign Data Framework (TSDF) system-wide — so Tribes can add high-resolution secure data (LiDAR, remote sensing), "paint" areas of opportunity, and export shareable products for partners without ever disclosing source data.

Built by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians — Tribal Climate Resilience.

Why it exists

GeoBase is a ground-up rebuild after a prototype hit a wall: its data pipeline verified green at every step, yet the cloud-dependent 3D terrain renderer never worked, and the project drowned in duplicate viewers and co-located data. GeoBase fixes those root causes by design — see docs/LESSONS-FROM-PROTOTYPE.md.

Architecture at a glance

• Spine (crates/geobase-core) — shared data model, catalog, CRS pipeline, layer-package API.
• TSDF (crates/geobase-tsdf) — versioned, pluggable tier resolver. Tier definitions load at runtime from a vendored file, the public framework repo, or (future) a private governance server — swappable by config.
• Desktop Engine (crates/geobase-engine-desktop) — the heavyweight local, grounded node: secure GPKG vault, local tile server, TSDF enforcement, federation (Rust + Tauri).
• Light Engine (engine-light/) — MapLibre GL viewer for web / small apps, deployable to GitHub Pages. No cloud-terrain dependency.
• Ingestor "GeoPack" (crates/geobase-ingestor) — packages files, documents, imagery, shapefiles, and databases into GeoPacks: TSDF-tagged secure GeoPackage bundles, harmonized and ready to serve.
• SoLO (solo/) — Sovereign Layer Orchestrator SDK + apps (RStep first).

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md and the 10-phase plan in docs/ROADMAP.md.

The TSDF tiers

Tier	Name	Meaning
T0	Open/Public	Publicly released by sovereign decision — the federated baseline
T1	Network	Shared within the Indigenous network
T2	Negotiated	Shared with external partners via formal agreement (product only)
T3	Sovereign	Never leaves community systems — local-only, ceremony-gated

Default classification is T3: "When in doubt, classify as T3." See docs/TSDF-INTEGRATION.md. The framework itself lives at atniclimate/TieredSovereignDataFramework.

Development

Prerequisites: Rust (stable), Node ≥ 20, pnpm ≥ 9.

# Rust workspace
cargo build --workspace
cargo test --workspace

# TypeScript workspaces
pnpm install
pnpm -r build

# Run the Light Engine locally
pnpm --filter @geobase/engine-light dev

Status

docs/ROADMAP.md is the single source of truth for phase-acceptance status — see it for what is accepted-complete versus in progress. This section is deliberately not a restated snapshot (a prior version drifted stale here); for the release-scope question ("what ships in 1.0"), see docs/RELEASE-DEFINITION.md (RATIFIED 2026-07-16).

Project workflow & canonical documents

Source-of-truth hierarchy (full rules in docs/RELEASE-DEFINITION.md):

• docs/ROADMAP.md — phase-acceptance status authority (the 10-phase spine).
• PLAN_1.0.md — the working plan to the 1.0 line: task detail, dependencies, verification, decision gates.
• docs/DECISIONS.md — every recorded decision, owner ratifications included.
• docs/ROADMAP.yaml — machine-readable index + exact session resume point, subordinate to the three above; refreshed at each true-up.

Session workflow (Claude Code): /pickup resumes from the documented state; /trueup verifies, reconciles docs, commits, pushes, and stops cleanly (definitions in .claude/commands/). Session handoffs live in docs/handoffs/ (gitignored, local-only by design — the repo is the Heart; process notes stay local). Superseded documents are not moved: they carry an in-file STATUS banner pointing at their successor (physical reorganization is deferred to post-1.0 by decision gate DG-5 — see MANIFEST.md).

Licensing

• Code: Apache-2.0 (see LICENSE).
• TSDF framework content vendored under spec/tsdf/ remains CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0; it is not relicensed by inclusion. See spec/tsdf/ATTRIBUTION.md.

Real geospatial data is never committed to this repository — secure GeoPackages, LiDAR, and imagery live outside version control. The only exception is the small synthetic CI test fixtures under data/fixtures/.