ABSTRACT
Google Earth can be an effective tool to educate the public about environmental risk, especially when it is coupled with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) data. This data set employs information submitted by facilities that emit toxic pollutants into the air, such as chemicals distributors, manufacturers, mining industries, utility operations, and hazardous waste treatment and disposal plants. The first step to loading the geographic data into Google Earth was to load the RSEI data into ArcGIS. The data set for the Detroit Metro Area was pulled out of a larger national database that houses pollution risk scores for every 1 × 1 km2 in the United States. Google Earth provides the opportunity to visualize data in 3D and drive through it in order to look at complex spatial patterns from various perspectives.
