Ground Truth

Civic environmental monitoring

The city is changing. The record should keep up.

Ground Truth lines up what neighbors notice, what a field kit can measure, and what public filings and the power grid already show. Data centers are the sharpest case: noise, water, and load often arrive before the sign on the fence.

On the map
6
report types around Arlington
In the atlas
125
campuses, estimated load
In Virginia
4
counties traced from signals
In the field
QA
screening vs assured readings

One job

Four ideas the prototypes already share

  1. 01

    Notice

    A smell, a noise, dumped drums, or a fence line that showed up last month. Reports close in place and time become one incident instead of a pile of separate posts.

  2. 02

    Measure

    Water, air, heat, and noise kits, with a plain line between a screening reading and one that can stand in front of an agency. Courses and Adopt-a-Site keep a record going.

  3. 03

    Trace

    EPA permits, inspections, and known data centers sit beside the clues that arrive earlier: bill spikes, permit filings, substations, and load that outruns the explanation.

  4. 04

    Act

    The same evidence can draft a complaint, point to a public meeting, or name the tradeoffs of a new campus: power, water, tax, and noise from the public sidewalk.

Still separate

Five approaches, linked from here

Each build stays where it is. This page is the front door until the map, the kits, the signal trace, and the atlas live in one project.

  • Civilian reports

    This map

    The rebuild in this repo, at /map. Neighbors log odor, air, water, dumping, noise, and construction around Rosslyn. Incidents share a timeline with EPA facilities and Northern Virginia data centers. Wind ranks likely upwind sources, and a complaint draft is ready for the county, Virginia DEQ, EPA, or airport noise.

    Open this map

  • Same reports map

    Lovable build

    The same Arlington civilian-reports project, hosted earlier. Filters, official sites, evidence notes, and the same path from a neighbor report toward an agency.

    Open the Lovable map

  • Field network

    Ground Truth v2

    Kits for water, air, heat, noise, and the sidewalk outside a data center. A live map of screening and quality-assured readings, field reports, and programs that teach people to collect data an agency can use.

    Open the v2 site

  • Virginia signals

    Data Center Watch

    A reverse trace of data-center presence. Electricity bill spikes, water readings, noise complaints, and permit filings run through the grid, from signal to substation to county. Known OpenStreetMap sites stay on the map.

    Open Data Center Watch

  • National inventory

    Siting Atlas

    Where campuses are, where electrical load is growing faster than the story, and what makes a parcel attractive. Load pressure, siting criteria, a worked local example, utility filings, the meeting to attend, and an impact calculator.

    Open the Siting Atlas