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Canopulse

Research

Open methodology. Honest uncertainty.

Canopulse documents its sources, processing steps, and limitations openly. The goal is a framework that is rigorous, inspectable, and built to grow with new data.

Input data layers

Authoritative sources only.

  • Tree canopy

    NLCD 2021 Tree Canopy Cover (TCC v2021-4)

    202130 m raster

  • Heat

    Landsat 8/9 C2L2 ST_B10 summer composite

    2023100 m native

  • Impervious

    NLCD 2021 Impervious Surface

    202130 m raster

  • Social vulnerability

    CDC/ATSDR SVI 2022 (RPL_THEMES)

    2022Census tract

  • Environmental burden

    CalEnviroScreen 4.0

    2021Census tract

Confidence framework

Honest about uncertainty.

Each tract receives a confidence label - High, Moderate, Low, or Insufficient - computed as the weakest-link minimum across data vintage, native spatial resolution, in-tract coverage, and QA quality.

HighModerateLowInsufficient

Robustness

Tested against itself.

  • · Formula audit and unit checks
  • · Weight sensitivity (7 scenarios)
  • · Leave-one-out
  • · Normalization comparison
  • · Redundancy / correlation matrix
  • · Monte Carlo uncertainty (1,000+ runs)

Research Foundation

A research-driven approach to urban climate prioritization.

Canopulse is being developed as a transparent geospatial framework for identifying neighborhoods where environmental exposure and vulnerability intersect.

Urban canopy risk

Synthesizing tree-canopy gap, heat, and equity into one prioritization signal.

Heat vulnerability

Where heat exposure and vulnerability overlap most acutely.

Environmental justice

Cumulative burden integrated as a first-class component.

Tract-level analysis

Designed for the 11-digit US census tract - fine enough to act on.

Reproducible geospatial

Open-source authoritative data; scripts that anyone can re-run.

Transparent scoring

Confidence scoring, sensitivity analysis, and source provenance are built in.

Callout

The Urban Canopy Risk Index is being developed as a research-driven framework for identifying neighborhoods where environmental exposure and vulnerability intersect.

Development Timeline

From idea to a research-grade product.

Canopulse is unfolding as a multi-stage research effort. Each stage is documented with reproducible code and explicit assumptions.

  1. 01

    Research concept

    Formalize the problem: canopy deficit, urban heat, vulnerability, and EJ as one prioritization score.

  2. 02

    UCRI framework development

    Define components, normalization scheme, and a confidence framework with documented uncertainty.

  3. 03

    LA County method validation package

    Build a real-data, reproducible run across LA County's 2,498 tracts with explicit limitations.

  4. 04

    Operational interface

    Move the methodology into an interactive tract explorer, live-refresh engine, and screening report workflow.

    Current stage
  5. 05

    Future validation and expansion

    Independent validation against Tree Equity Score, ECOSTRESS LST, and stakeholder review; then scale to more cities.