Climate change is threatening the world’s hydrological cycles—increasing the likelihood of extreme events and droughts and dramatically altering ecosystems—while deficient infrastructure and policies are exacerbating inequitable access to energy in the United States, two reports from DataKind find.

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Data Science for Water Justice (38 pages, PDF) provides a case study of the Colorado River Basin—currently the biggest water crisis in the U.S.—and Energy Equity (20 pages, PDF) examines how low-income households are disproportionately affected by energy insecurity. According to Data Science for Water Justice, possible data-backed interventions for the basin include expanding the Colorado River Simulation System to enable water accounting and enhance understanding of how water is currently distributed and how it can be redistributed equitably; developing a household monitoring platform for water use and quality to help identify and respond to problems in real time; and using fallow land monitoring to support agricultural innovations and develop support applications for Indigenous crop management and efficient water use.

Energy Equity found that U.S. households in the lowest income quartile spent about 35 percent of their income on gas and utilities in 2022, due in part to a lack of fair access to clean energy and energy efficiency measures that could also reduce pollution impacts and increase overall health and well-being. While the report’s authors note that the federal Inflation Reduction Act may provide some relief, they call for leveraging the Environmental Protection Agency’s EJScreen, the government’s most comprehensive collection of environmental equity data; implementing the Low Income Energy Affordability tool, which combines census and energy data to enable users to examine the energy burden across multiple factors; and regularly maintaining those tools and datasets to produce dynamic and predictive models.

“On both water and energy, there is a widespread belief that a crisis is inevitable and there’s nothing we can do, but in fact, there are many interventions that have been identified and have yet to be implemented,” said DataKind CEO Lauren Woodman. “Data Science has already provided new opportunities in this regard and has the potential to transform how we measure and manage environmental issues, but only if the communities and government agencies closest to the problem have access to and understand how to use these tools.”

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