What it does
KURAS takes a project location and your plant list. For each plant it reports drought tolerance, the relative summer water need at that location (local water need) and winter suitability, together with the sources behind each result, and it groups the plants into irrigation zones (hydrozones) by their water need. Results can be downloaded as a PDF or Excel report.
What it does not do
- It does not give litres, irrigation schedules or irrigation system designs.
- It does not assess soil, pH, slope, maintenance or microclimate.
- It does not recommend plants; it assesses your list.
- It is not an official approval or a site guarantee.
Limits of the results and responsibility
KURAS is a decision support tool developed to assist professionals in plant selection. Its results are preliminary assessments based on the plant properties reported in the sources and on the climate data of the location; because of limitations in the sources and in the method, they may contain errors. The method is published openly and is open to criticism and improvement.
The results are not a final planting or irrigation decision. Plant selection, planting and irrigation decisions are the responsibility of the professional who assesses soil, maintenance and site conditions on the ground. Responsibility for decisions based on KURAS results lies with the user.
Privacy
Your Excel/CSV file is opened in your browser and is not uploaded to the server. Only plant names, quantities and the selected location are sent for analysis; they are not stored or written to logs. To close data gaps, only the names of plants for which no data was found are counted, without who searched for them or where. Feedback is separate and optional.
If you open the optional “Detailed map” while choosing a location, map tiles are loaded from OpenStreetMap and Esri servers; these providers can see the area you view. The default map of Türkiye makes no external requests.
Feedback
If you think a result is wrong, report it with the small warning triangle (⚠) next to the result; you may add a source or data if you wish. If a plant you are looking for is missing, write to us. Reports are reviewed; results change only with a reviewed new release.
Citation
If you used KURAS or its results in a study, report or publication, please cite the method paper:
Gilik, E., & Yılmaz, M. (2026). KURAS: A decision support system for the water need and winter suitability of landscape plants in Türkiye [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23436244
If you used the future-climate (2050 and 2090) results:
Gilik, E., & Yılmaz, M. (2026). Climate change impact on local water need and winter suitability of landscape plants in Türkiye: 2050 and 2090 projections with KURAS [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23436246
Because results depend on the release, it is enough to state the version you used and the access date in the text (e.g. “KURAS Version 0.9, accessed dd Month yyyy”).
The method and data sources are described on the Sources and method page; we recommend also citing the original sources of the data used.
Team and contact
The team behind KURAS. For questions, suggestions, collaboration and data contributions, contact us on LinkedIn.