Western Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Land Trust Win Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence

The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center and the Allegheny Land Trust won a Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence for their Urban Greenprint mapping tool. This tool was a collaborative effort between the Allegheny Land Trust and the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center run out of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban and Social Research. The tool is designed to inform land conservation efforts in Allegheny County. It enables people to easily view Allegheny County land use and property data along with environmental data, such as food gardens, parks, watersheds, and landslide-prone areas. It also allows communities and citizens to learn where green space and environmental challenges, such as landslide proneness and flooding, exist in their neighborhoods. They can improve their planning efforts by creating needed stormwater management in environmental justice areas that have none or by wisely siting development projects to save future disaster clean-up dollars. Through their work on the Urban Greenprint mapping tool, the Regional Data Center and the Allegheny Land Trust were able to encourage several new organizations to share environmental data.