DataCenter.Clinic: A GIS Platform for Understanding Local and Regional Impacts
DataCenter.Clinic: A GIS Platform for Understanding Local and Regional Impacts
Abstract
The rapid expansion of data centers has created demand for accessible, location-specific information on facilities, infrastructure, resource use, environmental conditions, and surrounding communities. DataCenter.Clinic is an open geospatial research and decision-support platform designed to bring these fragmented data into one interactive environment. Users can explore data centers across the United States at national, state, county, and facility scales; compare community conditions using health, environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic indicators; and examine individual facilities through profiles combining site characteristics, community context, before-and-after satellite imagery, land-use/land-cover change, and related news. A multi-layer GIS architecture integrates public datasets, remote sensing, spatial analysis, and research evidence. The platform also includes DORA, a retrieval-augmented AI research assistant grounded in more than 550 peer-reviewed papers, government reports, policies, and ordinances, providing source-linked answers to user questions. This presentation will demonstrate the platform’s geospatial design, data integration workflow, community-ranking methods, facility-level analyses, and AI capabilities. It will also discuss how the system can support planners, researchers, public agencies, industry, and communities seeking a clearer and more complete understanding of data center development and operations. The project illustrates how GIS can connect facility intelligence with environmental and community perspectives to support informed, transparent, and responsible decision-making.