Introduction

Autark provides a client-side platform for implementing urban visual analytics software. It supports loading, storing, querying, joining, and exporting physical and thematic urban data using standard formats such as OpenStreetMap, GeoJSON, and GeoTIFF. By using GPU acceleration, Autark enables the implementation of algorithms for sophisticated urban analyses, such as shadow and visibility analysis, as well as classic machine learning algorithms such as regression and clustering. Finally, it provides a collection of interactive plots and a 3D map for visualizing urban data.

Packages

Autark is available as a single package or as individual modules:

Package	Purpose
@urban-toolkit/autk	Complete package that re-exports the toolkit modules
@urban-toolkit/autk-core	Core shared definitions used by all other Autark libraries
@urban-toolkit/autk-db	A spatial database that handles physical and thematic urban datasets
@urban-toolkit/autk-map	A WebGPU-based vector map visualization library for exploring 2D and 3D physical and thematic layers
@urban-toolkit/autk-compute	A WebGPU-based computation engine for implementing general-purpose algorithms using physical and thematic data
@urban-toolkit/autk-plot	A D3.js-based plot library designed to consume urban data in standard formats and facilitate linked views

For demonstration and documentation purposes, we provide a large collection of examples illustrating the core functionality of each module in the examples and usecases sections.

Installation

Autark packages are available on npm. To install the complete package run:

npm install @urban-toolkit/autk

Or install individual modules when you only need part of the toolkit:

npm install @urban-toolkit/autk-core
npm install @urban-toolkit/autk-db
npm install @urban-toolkit/autk-map
npm install @urban-toolkit/autk-compute
npm install @urban-toolkit/autk-plot

autk-core is automatically bundled

autk-core contains the shared low-level primitives (color maps, triangulators, geometry utilities, and more) used by autk-db, autk-map, autk-compute, and autk-plot. You do not normally install it directly. It is already included as a dependency of those packages.

Serverless by Design

All Autark packages run in the browser without a backend. Data is fetched directly from public APIs such as the Overpass API or from static file servers. Queries run inside a DuckDB instance in the browser. Map visualization and analytical compute workloads use WebGPU. Interactive plots are built using D3.js.

Browser requirements

autk-map and autk-compute require a browser with WebGPU support. autk-db and autk-plot work in any modern browser. The table below shows the compatible browser versions.

Browser	Support Status	Minimum Version
Chrome	Full	113+
Edge	Full	113+
Safari	Full	26+
Firefox	Full	141+
Opera	Full	99+

Minimal Example

The interactive playground below loads OpenStreetMap data for the Financial District in New York and renders it as a full 3D city map — with surface, parks, water and roads.

Make changes to the examples

Try to add "buildings" to the layers list and click Run to test changes.

The canvas

The canvas argument used in the autk-map constructor must be a reference to a DOM node containing a HTML canvas.