López-Hoffman Lab helping to modernize NEPA through NEPAccess

The López-Hoffman Lab pursues solutions-oriented research on a diverse set of environmental governance challenges at multiple scales and across boundaries.

The NEPAccess project uses data science to help modernize the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Until now, the lack of systematic data on NEPA’s performance has hindered decision-makers, and public participation in NEPA processes has been stymied by limited access to documents. The NEPAccess project brings together a team of data scientists, public policy and legal scholars, and environmental researchers to address these limitations. 

NEPAccess is an innovative knowledge and discovery platform that, when publicly available, will enable the full vision of NEPA as a science-based decision-making process. NEPAccess will be the largest single repository of NEPA documents. It will provide advanced search tools, georeferencing capabilities, mechanisms to assess public engagement, and access to NEPA information across agencies, action types, regions, and sectors.

These short videos feature the undergraduate students involved in the project explaining how NEPAccess works and the experience of working in team behind it.

About_NEPAccess_student_video from Jonathan Derbridge on Vimeo.