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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

Official and established public datasets.

Landsat land-surface temperature is native 100 m resolution and was resampled to 30 m for spatial alignment. Resampling does not increase the native information resolution.

Components, layers and records are different counts. Five weighted components come from five component datasets. Adding the census tract boundary layer, which every component is carried on and none is weighted by, gives six published data layers. Those layers draw on six official sources, and counting the processing environment they are computed in gives seven source and processing records.

  • 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, delivered at 30 m

  • Impervious

    NLCD 2021 Impervious Surface

    202130 m raster

  • Social vulnerability

    CDC/ATSDR SVI 2022 (RPL_THEMES)

    2022Census tract

  • Environmental burden

    CalEnviroScreen 5.0 Pollution Burden

    2026Census tract

Confidence framework

Honest about uncertainty.

Each tract receives a confidence label computed as the weakest-link minimum across data vintage, native spatial resolution, in-tract coverage, and QA quality. The rubric defines four labels. This release uses two of them.

High0 tracts
Not attainable in this release
Moderate9,033 tracts
Every fully scored tract
Low0 tracts
No tract meets this rule in this release
Insufficient96 tracts
Provisional and unscored records

Why no tract reaches High. High requires every contributing layer at a native resolution of 30 m or finer with a vintage within two years. Landsat land-surface temperature is natively 100 m and was resampled to 30 m for alignment, which does not increase its information resolution, and both CDC/ATSDR SVI and CalEnviroScreen Pollution Burden are tract-level composite indices. Each of those three triggers the Moderate rule, so no tract in this release reaches High.

A thermal source at 30 m native resolution, and component inputs that are measured rather than composite, would make High reachable. Both are data availability questions rather than changes to the index.

Robustness

Tested against itself.

  • Formula audit and unit checks
  • Weight sensitivity across seven scenarios
  • Leave-one-out testing
  • Normalization comparison
  • Redundancy and correlation matrix
  • Monte Carlo uncertainty testing across 1,000 or more runs

Research Foundation

A research-driven approach to urban climate prioritization.

Canopulse is 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 burden

CalEnviroScreen 5.0 Pollution Burden integrated as the current EBS component.

Tract-level analysis

Designed for the 11-digit US census tract to support subsequent local investigation.

Open methodology

The formula, source registry, processing framework, model registry, and release-integrity artifacts are available for review.

Transparent scoring

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

Callout

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

Development Timeline

From concept to a statewide screening release.

Current operations and historical development are separated clearly. Each release retains its own source records, assumptions, and reproducibility materials.

  1. 01

    Research concept

    Formalize the screening question across canopy deficit, heat exposure, impervious surface, social vulnerability, and environmental burden.

  2. 02

    LA historical baseline

    Freeze the Los Angeles County release for historical reproducibility. Its record counts, sources and artifacts are preserved in the Technical Archive and it is not the current operating model.

  3. 03

    California data foundation

    Extend the registered tract foundation to all 58 counties and 9,129 California census tracts while preserving explicit missing-data states.

  4. 04

    Current July 2026 release

    Release California UCRI with CalEnviroScreen 5.0 Pollution Burden as EBS: 9,033 fully scored, 74 provisional, and 22 unscored tract records.

    Current stage
  5. 05

    Independent review roadmap

    Continue external methodology review, sensitivity testing, and outcome-validation research without presenting ongoing work as completed validation.

Research | Canopulse