About Terris

Built For Transparent Environmental Awareness

Terris exists to make environmental context easier to understand.

Environmental data is public - but it's often scattered, technical, and difficult to interpret. Terris brings federal site data into one place and translates it into something simple, consistent, and inspectable.

The goal is not to diagnose contamination. The goal is to help people explore, ask better questions, and understand what's around them.

Data Sources

Terris aggregates publicly available federal datasets, including:

Landfill site records
Military base locations
Industrial facility registry points
EPA Superfund (NPL) sites

These sources provide location-based records of regulated or historically significant environmental sites.

How It Works

Terris uses a consistent, rules-based approach:

It calculates how close your selected point is to different types of environmental sites.
It counts how many regulated facilities are within set distance ranges.
These signals are combined into a 0-10 Environmental Exposure Proxy Score.
A transparent evidence list shows exactly which nearby records contributed to the result.
The scoring system is deterministic - meaning the same location always produces the same result, based strictly on the data.

Limitations and What's Next

Terris is a screening tool, not a contamination test.

It does not measure water, soil, or air.
It depends on the completeness and recency of public datasets.
Proximity and category presence provide context - not proof of exposure.
Next steps include:
Improving category filtering and data quality signals
Adding richer transparency around dataset coverage
Expanding educational and policy context