Stories Behind the Data Loss
Ever since PEDP began archiving at-risk environmental data, we’ve been hearing from people across the country: Researchers, city planners, and community advocates have all told us how the data we’ve preserved and the tools we’ve rebuilt have helped them.
Just the other day, someone wrote: “Thank you for saving my master’s thesis.” We have also heard from local government staff who say, “I use the FEMA Future Risk Index to figure out how to spend our limited resources. Thank you for making sure we still have access.”
Data can seem abstract. But what really matters are the stories behind it: what datasets make possible, and who gets hurt when they disappear. Since PEDP’s founding, part of our coalition’s mission has been to make visible not just the data at risk, but the people who depend on it. When our data infrastructure works, it is largely invisible, noticeable only when it fails. PEDP’s advocacy work seeks to bring these stories into the light.
I. Telling the Human Stories Behind Data Loss
PEDP brings together organizations working to maintain, protect, and preserve our environmental data infrastructure. Over the past year, we have launched several projects to tell the human stories behind data loss.
Data stories within our Made Possible series, such as “Protect the Data That Nourishes Us” and the Environmental Justice Data Tools Story, profile specific tools we’ve rebuilt and the people whose work depends on them. PEDP is looking for more storytellers who want to do similar research; if you have a story to tell about how environmental data has shaped your work or community, we’d love to hear from you.
We also partnered with the Data Index Project and America’s Essential Data on “Dearly Departed Datasets”, a project memorializing the data we’ve lost. We crowdsourced nominations and invited people to help us eulogize data that matters to them. One example, the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, tracked emissions from large industrial facilities. With that program proposed to be repealed, communities living near those plants will now lose a critical window into how emissions affect their health. PEDP is continuing to expand and prioritize this list of essential datasets. But the datasets being removed are only one part of the picture. Budget cuts, staffing losses, and program terminations all contribute to a broader erosion of our data infrastructure.
The People Behind the Work
None of this would be possible without the incredible volunteers and PEDP team, many of whom previously worked to build the very tools they now help preserve. We spoke with several of them about why they joined PEDP and what keeps them going.
Kameron Kerger worked on the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) at the U.S. Digital Service and then at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, serving as the design and research lead. After leaving the federal government, she joined PEDP through her role at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). Describing CEJST as a "natural continuation of her previous work," Kameron has provided guidance on updating the tool and helped make it available in Spanish again. "I am very excited about our current efforts to engage with the Environmental Justice community to learn how we might make the tool more useful and accessible outside of the federal context," she said.
Vim Shah, one of the original developers for CEJST, describes it as a vitally important tool built with so many resources, time, and effort that deleting it would be a shame. When asked why he joined PEDP, he responded enthusiastically: "It really bothers me that the government of today is trying to take these programs offline. I was thrilled when I found out that PEDP had rescued CEJST and many others. When I found out they were looking for people to help out, it was a no brainer!"
Eric Nost, an academic geographer at the University of Guelph and a member of PEDP cofounder the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) since 2017, chose to work on EJScreen because "it was, at the federal level, the best and most well known EJ tool, used widely by activists and state and local governments too." Involved in environmental racism research in Canada, he felt it was "important to try to preserve the best example we have in the US, at the federal level, of an EJ screening tool, so that Canadian officials had something to look at and consider in their own work." Eric also knew that "it wasn't enough just to 'rescue' data but to 'repair' and rework it," which drew him to PEDP's approach.
II. Tracking Threats to Capacity
Beyond documenting losses and telling the stories behind the data and tools we’ve restored, the PEDP community rallies when programs are at risk. When the administration announced plans to close the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), PEDP organized an open letter that gathered hundreds of signatures, lifting up NCAR’s role in wildfire research, climate science, and American innovation. PEDP is continuing to encourage people in our community to support efforts to provide comments to NSF on the vital work of NCAR. We’ve also been working with journalists to communicate these risks to broader audiences (FedScoop, Politico, TIME).
The Impact Project, another PEDP member, has been mapping the effects of budget cuts across the country and what those cuts mean for ongoing data collection. Their work helps connect the dots between agency capacity and the data infrastructure we all depend on. EDGI has been tracking all the EJ Grants awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act and other Congressional Appropriations that the EPA Administrator intends to cancel or has already canceled. PEDP’s goal is to show how budget and staffing cuts have real-world implications across America.
III. The Future We Want to Build
While tracking losses, PEDP is also looking ahead. What policy changes do we need to strengthen America’s data infrastructure? Where can we encourage investments that make the government more efficient and the science stronger? And beyond protection: what’s the vision for an environmental data infrastructure that doesn’t just restore what we had, but reimagines what’s possible?
PEDP, in partnership with cofounder Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP), the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), and the Kapor Foundation, hosted the Future of Open Environmental Data Infrastructure convening that brought together leaders from across the movement to explore these questions. That gathering produced a report outlining considerations for a more resilient, federated data ecosystem. We’re building on years of research, including EDGI’s work on information policy, and over the next year we'll be developing recommendations on what kinds of policy at the local, state, and federal levels could make environmental data more accessible, usable, and impactful, while building resilience so we can avoid the kind of crisis we've seen unfold this past year.
The stories PEDP members hear each day make one thing clear: environmental data is critical American infrastructure. Our work matters because this information matters.
As we look ahead, there is an opportunity to imagine what future data infrastructure could be. More robust. More federated. More resilient. We look forward to being part of that conversation, and to helping chart a path back to science and data driven policy.
