Everyday questions
Questions about one address, asked by many people: what to plant, how loud, how hot, will it flood. Who answers them, and what a model adds.
Most questions people bring to a place are small. What will grow in this garden? How loud is this street at night? Is the air worse here than two blocks over? Will this lot flood, or bake in summer? Where would solar panels go on this roof? Today the answer usually comes from an expert paid by the hour, from a listing site's score, or from nobody.
Each of these is one address, asked now, by one person, and asked again by millions of others. The data to answer most of them is public: soil surveys, noise and air maps, flood maps, climate records. What is missing is the step from those layers to a plain answer for one place, and a growing number of services sell exactly that step.
The pages here set out each question: who asks it, who they ask today, which data answers it, who already sells an answer, and the formal methods and standards behind it. Each also says what a small look ahead would add, such as the same garden under the climate expected in twenty years, because that is where a model of a place does something a lookup cannot.
The questions share their data. Soil, sun, water, heat, noise and traffic answer several of them at once, and together they are most of what a model of a whole town needs. The scenarios are the large decisions; these are the small ones, and the layers they need are the same.
Whether daily trips from one address can be made on foot, by bike or by transit, from nearby destinations, connected streets and frequent service.
How much fine particle and traffic pollution reaches one street, judged against health guidelines, from monitors, home sensors and street-level maps.
How hot one street or house gets in summer turns on the regional climate, nearby shade and paving, humidity and the changing count of very hot days.
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How much road, rail and aircraft noise reaches one address by day and at night, from public noise maps, health guidelines and commercial noise scores.
Whether panels on one roof would repay their cost turns on its sun and shade, the panels, the price of power and the rules for selling it back to the grid.
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How much tree canopy covers one street or block, how much it cools the air on a summer day, and what planting or losing trees would change for its residents.
Weather & climateLiving systemsPeople & societyCities & places
Which plants will survive and do well at one address, judged from its winter cold, frost dates, soil, sun and rain, now and under a warmer climate.
Whether one house or lot will flood turns on the official flood map, the rain, rivers and tides around it, the shape of the ground, and the climate over the life of a mortgage.