Nerds of Steel

There’s a very useful Google Maps mashup from MapEcos that uses emissions data from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (which has been gathering industrial emissions data from industrial facilities since 1988). You will be asked to enter a name and a zip code on the landing page link above. You can do so or just hit skip it and go to the map. Once the map has booted, enter 3312 in the second search box for the SIC code for steel. All steel facilities in the database will populate the map. Zoom in on any region and then one of the map markers and the TRI data for each facility (along with other information) will show up in the marker’s callout balloon in a series of tabs along the top of the callout. 

And here’s the answer to the question “Who developed MapEcos?”:

Professors Andrew King (Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth), Michael Lenox (Fuqua School of Business), Michael Toffel (Harvard Business School), and students at Dartmouth College conceptualized this map to provide a public service to a variety of stakeholders, including managers of the facilities depicted on this map, community members where these facilities are located, environmental regulators, and the general public. They are also using this map to support their academic research that examines the voluntary disclosure of information and how users employ information. The technical aspects of this map have been developed by an amazing group of programmers (principally Evan Tice, Chris Hughes, Loren Sands-Ramshaw, and Jason Reeves). They and other members of MapMundi are responsible for making this map a reality. Harvard Business School’s Research Computing Services supported the acquisition and transfer of survey data from the facilities onto this map. 

Apart from anything else, it helps to know where everyone is.  It would be nice to see the same for other regions.