Community Lattice, one of the data.org Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge award awardees, advances community development by equipping people with the data and resources they need to create economically sustainable, socially equitable, and resilient places. They work primarily with underserved urban and rural communities throughout the U.S. to identify and overcome environmental challenges inhibiting equitable growth.

Community Lattice sought DataKind’s help to better understand cleanup costs of brownfields, which are a significant strain on an area’s tax base and inhibit economic growth. Utilizing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Assessment, Cleanup, and Redevelopment Exchange System (ACRES) data, which contains site, contaminant, and cost information on over 25 years of brownfields redevelopment projects, Community Lattice wanted to explore creating a Cleanup Cost Calculator to predict the cost of brownfields cleanup to address the environmental uncertainty and financial risk associated with brownfields redevelopment.