Mapping Geospatial Tools for Environmental Justice 

Decades of research have shown that the most disadvantaged communities exist at the intersection of high levels of hazard exposure, racial and ethnic marginalization, and poverty.

Mapping and geographical information systems have been crucial for analyzing the environmental burdens of marginalized communities, and several federal and state geospatial tools have emerged to help address environmental justice concerns — such as the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool developed in 2022 in response to Justice40 initiatives from the Biden administration.

Constructing Valid Geospatial Tools for Environmental Justice, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, offers recommendations for developing environmental justice tools that reflect the experiences of the communities they measure.

The report recommends data strategies focused on community engagement, validation, and documentation. It emphasizes using a structured development process and offers guidance for selecting and assessing indicators, integrating indicators, and incorporating cumulative impact scoring. Tool developers should choose measures of economic burden beyond the federal poverty level that account for additional dimensions of wealth and geographic variations in cost of living. They should also use indicators that measure the impacts of racism in policies and practices that have led to current disparities.

The committee that wrote the report was not asked to review a specific tool, but rather to conduct a scan of existing environmental justice tools to identify types of data needed for developing future tools and evaluating data availability, quality, and gaps.

The report is now available for immediate release. For inquiries, reporters can contact the Office of News and Public Information at tel. 202-334-2138 or email news@nas.edu.