Beneath New York City’s iconic skyline lies an invisible but pervasive threat: chronic exposure to extreme heat, polluted air, and crowded transit conditions that affect millions daily.
NewYorkLab delivers hyperlocal environmental intelligence—mapping subway station heat, air pollution, and environmental stress—to surface risks that traditional urban data often overlooks.
Urban health metrics have long failed to capture the unique stressors of dense, subterranean environments. NewYorkLab addresses this through:
These granular datasets highlight disparities across boroughs, transit lines, and neighborhoods—enabling targeted climate adaptation and public health interventions.
New York City is experiencing an increase in both the frequency and severity of heat waves, a trend that climate models predict will accelerate. During these events, many subway stations routinely exceed temperatures that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would classify as unsafe for prolonged exposure—often surpassing 90°F with high humidity. These conditions amplify cardiovascular strain and respiratory distress, particularly for those with pre-existing conditions, and represent an invisible but acute public health crisis that will worsen as climate change accelerates.
The risks are not evenly distributed. Seniors, essential workers, and low-income commuters—many of whom rely on the subway as their primary means of transportation—are exposed daily to these hazardous conditions. Despite this, there is little public visibility or awareness of how environmental conditions vary across stations and boroughs. Without hyperlocal data and transparency, these communities remain at a disadvantage, unable to make informed decisions about their health and mobility.
Federal, state, and local governments—as well as transit agencies—are under pressure to make resilience investments, but they need credible, actionable data to justify and prioritize spending. Infrastructure dollars are increasingly tied to demonstrated need and equity-focused outcomes, particularly in the wake of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Environmental intelligence, like the kind NewYorkLab provides, can help agencies direct capital to where it delivers the greatest public health benefit and ensure that resilience planning is data-driven, transparent, and equitable.
NewYorkLab illustrates a larger opportunity: transforming passive environmental data into a critical tool for proactive asset management and risk mitigation across public and private sectors.
Leading global cities—London, Singapore, Doha, Tokyo, and others—are increasingly recognizing that hyperlocal environmental data drives smarter infrastructure planning and enables more equitable health outcomes.
Environmental intelligence dashboards at the station level—helping private operators, investors, and asset managers monitor, manage, and mitigate environmental risk across critical infrastructure.
In short: