Literature v3 · Research topic
Does your neighborhood's income affect how much heat and air pollution you experience?
Using free public data from the EPA, NOAA, and the Census, you can investigate whether low-income neighborhoods in a U.S. city face higher summer temperatures and worse air quality.
Why this matters
What if the air you breathe and the heat you feel depend not just on where you live, but on how much you earn? Using free public data from the EPA, NOAA, and the Census, you can uncover hidden environmental injustices in your own city—no lab coat required.
Project scores
Difficulty
This project is suitable for high school students with some experience in data analysis. Over 8 weeks, you will learn to access and merge public datasets from EPA, NOAA, and Census Bureau, clean and analyze spatio-temporal data, and interpret statistical relationships. Prerequisites include basic statistics and spreadsheet skills; familiarity with R or Python is helpful but not required. The pace
3 of 5 difficulty
Strengths
- Uses real-world, publicly available data to address environmental justice
- Combines multiple data sources (air quality, temperature, socioeconomic)
- Replicates a published study, providing clear methodological guidance
Skills built
Zero-cost data
Zero-cost dataResearch gap
What if the air you breathe and the heat you feel depend not just on where you live, but on how much you earn? Using free public data from the EPA, NOAA, and the Census, you can uncover hidden environmental injustices in your own city—no lab coat required.
Curriculum alignment
Unlock the full research scaffold & literature chain
Sign in to open competition fit, the complete milestone roadmap, admissions narrative drafts, and the full research write-up for this topic.
AI-generated topic content may be incomplete or incorrect—verify literature, data sources, methods, and admissions notes with your mentor and primary sources.