About this project

Why it exists

This started with my mom. My little brother goes to Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, and over about six months, three data centers went up within a mile of his school. What bothered her most was that our family had no idea any of them were coming until they were there. She asked for a simple map built from the best data available, where you could look around where you live and see what's planned, under construction or operating. This is that map.

Where the data comes from

In Virginia: every site the Department of Environmental Quality flags as a data center in its daily Air Sites records (198 today). Data centers need a DEQ air permit for their backup diesel generators, so a project appears once it applies for one; the stage shown is DEQ's own. Permit dates come from DEQ's list of issued data center air permits. Schools are from the National Center for Education Statistics and ZIP codes from the U.S. Census Bureau. The data refreshes every morning, changes are logged on "New this week", and the build refuses to publish if a source looks broken. Every site links to its DEQ record. The methodology explains each source and its known issues, and the data downloads page has the data as spreadsheets (free with credit for non-commercial use and news reporting; see the data license) and an embed code for the map.

Earlier-stage proposals come from county records: land-use applications (rezonings, special exceptions) and site plans that mention a data center, from Loudoun County's public land application records so far. They're shown as diamonds on the map and listed on school, ZIP code, county and data center pages, each linked to its county record. The status is the county's own.

What's not here yet

Cost and size from county building permits, county filings from more counties, and, by ZIP code, the upcoming hearings, comment periods and elections where residents can weigh in. Those are being added next, then more states. A first piece is up: upcoming county meetings with data center items in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William, from the counties' published agendas, with how to sign up to speak or send comments.

Who made it

William McNulty, a Computer Science and Economics student at the University of Virginia. An independent project, not affiliated with Virginia DEQ, any locality or any company shown. Contact · Code and data on GitHub

Related work

The Piedmont Environmental Council's Existing and Proposed Data Centers map, and Brockovich Data Center Reporting.