Tag Archives: Environment

Hack The Future

The Million Dollar Question: Large Warehouses in Small Town America?

Welcome to Hack The Future! This is where theory meets practice. We introduce a case study of an urgent problem (or question) facing our society, and include publicly available data. For the next 60 days, our readers have the opportunity to propose a solution and make a recommendation based on their objective and thoughtful analysis of the situation. Solutions will be peer reviewed and posted on Your Life in Data for all to enjoy. Students are encouraged to participate!

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Our case study this Spring is the question of whether the small town of Holliston, MA should approve the development of a massive warehouse and distribution facility. Although the tenant has not been named, based on the size of the facility many town members suspect that it is one of many warehouses being developed by Amazon across the US.

The project is commonly referred to by its address: 555 Hopping Brook. Local opposition has created a helpful Website to follow the project’s progress in Town Hall, including links to many of the studies submitted by the developer, CRG. Some examples include:

The benefits to Holliston are outlined in the note from the Holliston EDC, and include $1 million dollars of increased tax revenue. As a smaller town of approximately 14,000 residents, Holliston struggles to attract commercial development to support basic town infrastructure. However, the town is very concerned about the impacts of a large project on local resources and the environment.

For this case study, you are an advisor to the Town Selectmen recruited to answer the following questions:

  1. What is the actual return to Holliston from this project, if not the one million dollars annually estimated by the Economic Development Committee? Have all costs (environmental and financial) been considered and fairly estimated based on your extraordinary analytical skill and deep research?
  2. What arguments should be used to inform the public of whether you approve or disapprove of the project ? Of all the data, what is most convincing and how should it be presented to the public in a manner that protects objectivity (and re-election prospects for the Selectmen) while telling a story?
  3. Based on your answer to #1, and your understanding of the key measures for evaluating this project, are there guidelines that you recommend to help Holliston find (and approve) projects in the future?

In your answers to the questions above, please state where more data would be necessary or helpful to complete your analysis. Reasonable assumptions are very welcome. Sources must be exhaustively cited and attributed for inclusion in your response. Good data visualization is highly recommended…and might even be featured in The Wicked Viz!

Holliston is counting on you! And your research will help thousands of other small towns suddenly faced with the sprawling growth of our online economy. Good luck!

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Impact On Society

Don’t Panic? What To Do When Amazon(?) Comes To Town

One of my favorite books, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, begins with a slightly hungover Arthur Dent waking up to the sound of a bulldozer warming to demolish his home in order to make way for a new hi-way. With little warning and few alternatives, Arthur takes the most reasonable course of action. He lies down in the mud in front of the bulldozer.

Holliston, MA is a relatively small town (est. pop 14,000) West of Boston that just awoke to the arrival of a massive (800,000 sqft) warehouse development project. Something odd happened last summer, when the trees at 555 Hopping Brook Rd were unceremoniously cut down with little explanation and no forewarning. Earlier this year, the intensions of CRG development became clear.

The industrial-zoned property is being groomed for a massive warehouse and distribution center. And while the eventual tenant is not currently known, The New York Times recently featured an article about Amazon’s expansion into small towns across America.

In response to the 555 Hopping Brook project, the residents of Holliston (and neighboring towns) organized a history of the project including the proposed impact studies submitted to the town for review. Some of the questions raised by residents include:

  • What happens to home values and corresponding residential property tax revenue when a 800,000 square foot warehouse and an additional 474,500 total annual trips (1,300 average daily trips x 365 days) of tractor-trailers and other vehicles are added to our town?
  • What is the expected cost of the road repairs from the additional 474,500 total annual trips of tractor-trailers and other vehicles?
  • Do we have the adequate emergency services (fire and police) to support this development? If not, what is the cost of additional support?
  • After all costs have been considered, what is the true economic impact of this project?

To date, the developer has offered to make minor improvements to a town road, such as adding additional signals and signage. The key financial benefit to Holliston is a proposed ~$1 million in additional tax revenue, about 1.2% of the total tax revenues currently received in 2019.

Town residents are now faced with a mix of anticipated risks (traffic, noise) and possible rewards ($1 million for town projects). And the decision on whether to move forward or not is a popular topic in the local Facebook Group:

If it’s not very explicitly laid out and guaranteed how tax revenues and town finances will be impacted, I see no reason to not fully expect more of the same run around..I believe the safe bet is having this facility will make it much LESS likely to be able to support the town infrastructure.

I would like to see a point where this town replaces its 52 year old high school and its dilapidated water system, without having to hear excuses about how we can’t pay for it..The developers are going to walk away, we’ll smugly claim some kind of victory, and we’ll have another two decades of indecision about how to pay for things.

Source: Holliston Residents posts on Facebook

One of the larger questions raised is whether a small, local government can even organize a response to a project of this size. With multiple committees and little precedent to follow, some members wonder who ultimately has the authority to approve or disapprove the project.

I spent several years as a Selectman, State Representative, and Chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Since those days laws have changed, authority has shifted, and I have no idea where the power to approve or end this assault upon the town lies.

Source: Holliston Resident post on Facebook

As a Holliston resident, I feel a bit like Arthur Dent on that fateful morning when forces from beyond came to demolish his home. And as one who lives happily in analytical strategy for many waking hours of the day, the situation feels all to familiar: we have a bunch of imperfect metrics to describe an existential problem about which the general public has already baked an opinion. Oh…and it’s not really clear who’s going to make the final call or if there is even budget to find an answer.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

To-date, Holliston has focused on (and publicized) a number of cost drivers including increased traffic, noise, and burden on emergency infrastructure. Less attention has been given to other environmental factors such as air pollution or water management that directly impact residential health and wellbeing over longer periods of time.

When data is difficult to assemble, creating comparisons becomes even more challenging. Will the warehouse project feel like a power plant? A new mall? What are the measures that should be used to evaluate different development options? Unfortunately, many smaller towns view development with a scarcity mentality…this may be the only shot at a bright new future.

The central question is whether $1 million will exceed the additional costs created by the warehouse project, and by how much. How did the developer arrive at $1 million in the first place? While we know this amount is about 1.2% of the town’s budget, what is the expected value of goods that will pass through the warehouse? What is the geographic value of Holliston relative to other potential site? These are much more difficult questions to answer.

Stress on a system is also a learning opportunity. The Holliston project has forced a number of difficult questions, and Holliston is still reacting to a development proposal. Can small towns muster enough analytical horsepower to proactively define a range of beneficial opportunities using more than anecdotal evidence?

Holliston is one of potentially hundreds of towns that will be impacted by warehouse expansion. For this reason, and because of the range of data available, the 555 Hopping Brook development is our Hack The Future project this Spring. Take a look at the data, explore, and submit your thoughts on what the town of Holliston should do.

The Wicked Viz

Warming Stripes: Data Viz in Action

Aside
https://www.climatecentral.org/showyourstripes
Credit: Ed Hawkins

“Warming Stripes” may be one of the most impactful visualizations of climate change. The colors reflect the scientific truth of warming, and are from the same palette as the American flag (red, white and blue), communicating the political imperative to act. What I especially appreciate about “Warming Stripes” is how, in the fine print, the methodology for collecting (and excluding) data is clearly disclosed. And, sadly, the movement to deny climate change has produced a counterfeit version of this visualization by only selecting the data points that support their opinion.

Forward Thinkers

The Analytics of Sustainability: Jaclyn Olsen and Caroleen Verly

On a quiet street just outside of the Square, Harvard’s Office for Sustainability occupies a decidedly green space.  The walls are literally a shade of green that hovers comfortably between lime and under-ripe avocado.  And if that becomes too perplexing, alternating blue walls (somewhere between ocean and indigo) provide visual relief.  My hosts Caroleen Verly and Jaclyn Olsen quickly explain that the colors were deliberately chosen as part of a broader mission to understand how the built environment affects health.  As I would soon learn, the Office for Sustainability views environmentalism with a wide-angle lens.

Jaclyn and Caroleen share an awe-inspiring picture of coordinated sustainability that extends well beyond the Harvard campus.  Back in 2008, the University set a campus-wide goal of reducing greenhouse gases 30% by 2016, from a 2006 baseline.  It was also the first sustainability goal that unified Harvard’s sprawling, decentralized operations towards a common objective with a clear deliverable and set of priorities. The only problem was that no one had yet agreed on what constituted a greenhouse gas or common standards of measurement.

One important role the Office for Sustainability plays is collecting and analyzing University-wide data for transparency and accountability, both internally and externally. This includes facilitating the collection and management of (large) volumes of data for participants to consume. When it came to implementing the 2006-2016 greenhouse gas reduction goal, OFS’ first step was to work with partners across campus to create a common measurement vocabulary that aligned participants in and outside of Harvard.  Let us not forget that we are talking about aggregating data from disjoint “Emissions Accounting” systems that might include building data, scope 3 emissions (e.g. Air Travel, Food) data, and procurement data.  We discuss the definition of “chicken” at length…does it only include the roasted variety?  What about chicken parmigiana?  The environmental difference between sourcing fresh vs. package meat is significant, and the challenge of creating a single definition of poultry is nothing to cluck about.

Jaclyn and Caroleen work with the Harvard and commercial communities to create new, credible measures for concepts such healthy food or greenhouse gases.  It’s an exercise of collaborating on a vision of what the ideal measurement should be, reaching consensus,  and then using this vision to assess or fit the available data into an emerging jigsaw puzzle.

So how are things going?

The ten year goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 30% was successfully achieved by 2016.  Harvard is now tackling a new set of goals striving to become fossil fuel-free by 2050, with an interim goal of becoming fossil fuel-neutral by 2026.  Never mind that  “Fossil Fuel Neutral” is a new term requiring the same level of definition that “Greenhouse Gas” needed  in 2008.  And this is only one component of Harvard’s overarching Sustainability Plan.  The Office’s work extends well beyond Harvard, providing leadership to Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission and a consortium of Higher Education in the New England area.

So how do they do it?

One of the key ingredients of successful Analytics initiatives is clear direction from the executive team.  The goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 30% came from the top, and echoed across campus.  Same for Harvard’s new goals around Fossil Fuel usage.

A second ingredient that is often overlooked is passion.  In their work on- and off-campus, Jaclyn and Caroleen refer to a shared sense of environmental purpose among participants.

A third factor is alignment between organizational and data strategy.  The data group (and hub) is designed to satisfy the strategic goals established in the Sustainability Plan.

The fourth factor is raw talent and sustained curiosity.  The Office employs expert analysts like Caroleen who are capable of the forensic work necessary to make sense of ambiguous data sources.  With a clear sense of direction, she is able to model an ideal data set and work backwards with the data at-hand to see what pieces fit and ultimately hang together with credibility.

Jaclyn Olsen is the Associate Director of the Harvard Office for Sustainability where she leads the development of new strategic initiatives and facilitates partnerships with faculty and other key University partners.

Caroleen Verly is an Analyst at the Harvard Office for Sustainability. Before joining OFS in 2013, Caroleen worked for the City of Cambridge to evaluate the feasibility of implementing a citywide curbside composting program.