EMI

Terms of Use and Disclaimer

1. What this service is

EMI is a free environmental screening tool. For any point on the world map it combines long-run environmental measurements into one Environmental Screening Score from 0 to 100 — higher means a lower measured environmental burden — across six pillars: air quality, heat stress, river flood, water, fire and green space. It is provided for informational and educational use, at no charge, with no account required. In this document, "the operator" means whoever operates this site.

It is a screening signal: it tells you where to look harder, not what to conclude.

2. Not professional advice

Nothing on this site is engineering, environmental, legal, financial, health or property advice. The score is not a survey, an inspection or an assessment of any specific site, and it must not be relied on as due diligence. Before any decision that depends on environmental conditions — buying, building, insuring, investing, relocating — verify the facts independently, with qualified professionals and primary data. A low score is a reason to investigate; a high score is not a verdict that a place is safe.

3. Hazards and coverage limits

  • Not included in this score: earthquake, coastal/storm-surge flooding, wind, landslide. None of these is measured anywhere in this product. Their absence from the score does not mean they were assessed and found absent.
  • The flood pillar covers river flooding only. Coastal flooding, storm surge and rainfall that never reaches a river are outside it, and the model behind it counts no flood defences. Where the river-flood model has no data, that is not the same as low risk.
  • A missing value reads "not measured", never zero. Absence of data is never a claim of safety, anywhere in this product.
  • Nothing here is real-time. The inputs are fixed historical datasets — for example 1991-2020 climate normals, a multi-year satellite PM2.5 average, a 2021 land-cover snapshot. The score describes long-run conditions, not today's, and it does not monitor, forecast or warn of current or imminent events.
  • Accuracy and coverage vary by region. How each pillar is computed, the data windows behind it and its known limitations are documented on the methodology page; read it before relying on any number.

4. Data sources and licences

The scores are derived works: the operator computes them from third-party datasets, used under their respective licences. The notices below cover the data behind the scores and the data shown beside them; OpenStreetMap feeds no score and supplies the basemap only. Those licences require the following notices, reproduced in their required wording (licence texts: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), [ODbL](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/)):

  • Atmospheric Composition Analysis Group, Washington University in St. Louis — SatPM2.5 V6.GL.03 — CC BY 4.0. Modified: reduced by EMI to per-cell values on H3 cells.
  • Climate TRACE emissions data — CC BY 4.0 with named exceptions; transformed by EMI into a distance-weighted PM2.5-equivalent proximity burden (release v5.10.0, year 2025).
  • Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service and Copernicus Emergency Management Service information 2026 — CC BY 4.0; the ERA5-Land climate data and CEMS Fire Weather Index are reduced by EMI to per-cell 1991-2020 climatologies on H3 cells, and the ERA5-Land data also to recent monthly means. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of this information.
  • Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026 — the ERA5-HEAT thermal-comfort statistics (derived-utci-historical) are used under the Licence to use Copernicus Products and are reduced by EMI to per-cell 1991-2020 means on H3 cells. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of this information.
  • Contains modified Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information 2026 — CC BY 4.0; the CAMS PM2.5 forecasts are reduced by EMI to monthly means on H3 cells. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use of this information.
  • MODIS MOD11A2 and MCD64A1 — NASA LP DAAC, accessed through Microsoft Planetary Computer.
  • Generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information; the monthly burnt-area fractions are modified by EMI into a per-cell annual maximum. Neither the European Commission nor the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service endorses EMI or is responsible for any use of this information.
  • Aqueduct Floods hazard maps — World Resources Institute, CC BY 4.0. Modified: the riverine return-period class sampled by EMI to H3 cells.
  • Source: WRI Aqueduct 4.0 (Kuzma et al. 2023), accessed 2026-10-19 — CC BY 4.0. Modified: EMI reduces it to the score and category of one river basin per H3 cell. Basins: HydroBASINS v1c (Lehner, B., Grill G. (2013): Global river hydrography and network routing: baseline data and new approaches to study the world's large river systems. Hydrological Processes 27(15): 2171-2186), www.hydrosheds.org.
  • This product EMI incorporates data from the HydroSHEDS version 1 database which is © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. (2006-2022) and has been used herein under license. WWF has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated within EMI, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. Portions of the HydroSHEDS v1 database incorporate data which are the intellectual property rights of © USGS (2006-2008), NASA (2000-2005), ESRI (1992-1998), CIAT (2004-2006), UNEP-WCMC (1993), WWF (2004), Commonwealth of Australia (2007), and Her Royal Majesty and the British Crown and are used under license. The HydroSHEDS v1 database and more information are available at https://www.hydrosheds.org. Licence: [HydroSHEDS Technical Documentation v1.4, Appendix A](https://data.hydrosheds.org/file/technical-documentation/HydroSHEDS_TechDoc_v1_4.pdf). Citation: Lehner, B., Verdin, K., Jarvis, A. (2008): New global hydrography derived from spaceborne elevation data. Eos, Transactions, AGU, 89(10): 93-94.
  • Source: EC JRC/Google — Global Surface Water (Pekel et al. 2016).
  • Built-up surface: GHS-BUILT-S R2023A, Global Human Settlement Layer — © European Union, 1995-2026, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC); Pesaresi & Politis (2023), doi:10.2905/9f06f36f-4b11-47ec-abb0-4f8b7b1d72ea. CC BY 4.0. Modified: aggregated to H3 cells by EMI.
  • © ESA WorldCover project 2021 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium — CC BY 4.0.
  • Place data: GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 — repackaged into a search index by EMI, with Wikidata (CC0).
  • Basemap: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL · Natural Earth.
  • Some emitter names come from public registers: E-PRTR (source: European Environment Agency), US EPA FLIGHT/GHGRP, and Canada's GHGRP. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.

HydroSHEDS / HydroBASINS notice

This is EMI's own notice, not part of the required wording above. The basin water-stress values on a point report are derived from WRI Aqueduct 4.0 and from HydroBASINS, part of the HydroSHEDS database owned by World Wildlife Fund, Inc. ("WWF"). They are provided for use within EMI (its website and its API) and not for redistribution. You may not:

  • extract, collect, redistribute or sublicense these basin values on their own or as a dataset;
  • reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the basin data, including by rebuilding basin boundaries from the values shown.

WWF provides the HydroSHEDS data "as is" and with all faults, without warranty of any kind, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. WWF is not liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages arising from them.

The complete list of sources, with what each is used for, is shown in the product's "Data sources" panel. No data provider endorses this product, and none is responsible for what this product publishes.

5. No warranty and limitation of liability

The service and its scores are provided as is and as available, with no warranty of any kind — no promise of accuracy, completeness, availability, or fitness for any particular purpose. Data errors, gaps and model limitations exist; the known ones are documented on the methodology page.

You use the service at your own risk. To the fullest extent the law that applies to you allows, the operator is not liable for any loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, the service or its scores — including decisions taken, or not taken, because of a score. If you need a dependable assessment of a specific site, commission one from qualified professionals; pointing you toward that step is exactly what this tool is for.

6. Privacy

There are no accounts and none is required. The service sets no tracking cookies, builds no user profiles and keeps no database of visitors — it is stateless by design. What it does process: the coordinates you click or search are processed on our own servers, against our own data, to compute the answer, and are sent to no third party. Your IP address is used transiently, in memory, for rate limiting. On your first visit, the approximate (city-level) location of your IP address, as provided by the hosting network, is used only to centre the map; it is not stored or shared. Responses may be cached — in memory and on the hosting network — so repeated requests for the same place answer faster.

7. Changes and contact

These terms may change as the product changes. The version published on this site is the current one. Questions, corrections and reports of errors are welcome through the contact channels published on the site.