NEPAccess upholds and supports the foundational U.S. environmental law—helping citizens, communities, developers, legislators, regulators, and advocates with solutions to common concerns about environmental policy processes.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
NEPAccess uses the tools of data science and AI to improve the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of environmental decision-making.
At NEPAccess.org, we created a knowledge, discovery and engagement platform for finding and analyzing decades of applied science and public participation in the NEPA process with seed funding from the NSF RIDIR program (1831551). The beta platform (2021-2024) enabled search, download, and analysis of environmental impact statements (EISs) and other documents created under the US National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), all in one place.
The project is led by a transdisciplinary team of University of Arizona researchers.