NEPAccess Vision for the Future
With additional funding, the NEPAccess of tomorrow will:
- Offer business analytics tools to support agencies and evaluate NEPA processes and outcomes.
- Use “Smart Scoping” and other retrieval-augmented generative AI tools to allow rapid synthesis, learning from past projects, and AI writing assistance for specific topics, e.g., scoping, proposed alternatives, monitoring, and mitigation.
- Expand our dynamic, centralized, public portal for environmental policy documents.
- Ensure justice and accountability of decision-making through data standards, and mapping and visualization of impacts, to enable clear accounting of impacts and benefits to communities.
- Support more efficient, transparent, and accountable NEPA engagement for all stakeholders.
Our road map
We are designing solutions to four common areas of concern about NEPA processes: efficiency, transparency, accountability & environmental justice, and climate resilience.
Common Concerns
With new funding we can build new features:
Strategic Impacts
Operational Improvements
Efficiency
“Environmental reviews of federal projects are inefficient, expensive, and time-consuming.”
✓ A user-friendly repository of available federal actions
✓ Business analytics tools and dashboards for NEPA
✓ Generative AI assistant for writing EIAs
NEPAccess lays the foundation to create timely and cost-effective policies and regulations.
NEPAccess creates a powerful solution for creating new EISs informed by data from projects across the country.
Transparency
“People don’t trust that they have a voice in federal environmental decisions.”
✓ Project & policy notifications for the public
✓ Online platform for public engagement, annotation, & comments
✓ A free & equitable platform for all users
Ensures democratization of information, fulfilling NEPA’s original vision of public participation.
Creates an accessible forum to engage with NEPA environmental reviews, facilitating clear communication between users and agencies.
Accountability & Environmental justice
“There’s no way to track impacts and affected communities.”
✓ Tracking projects by census data
✓ Mapping proposed alternatives & zones of impact
✓ Curated news and social media reports highlighting environmental impacts
Provides the data to craft new regulations and policies promoting equity in project benefits and impacts.
Implements a system for visualizing and tracking impacts in specific communities to a granular level.
Climate Resilience
“Federal environmental reviews aren’t yet effectively addressing climate change.”
✓ Powerful search filters for climate-related data
✓ Climate-specific tools, dashboards, & mapping
Supports development of more climate-friendly policies and projects.
Enables design of resilient infrastructure. Identifies climate impacts on landscapes and communities.
