Open Data
Harvard Environment and Law Data Repository (HELD)
Strong environmental and public health protections rely on comprehensive, high-quality data, which only the federal government has the capacity to collect and maintain at scale. Recognizing this, Congress has long mandated agencies to gather and publish national data. During the first Trump administration, Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program (EELP) documented efforts across the federal government to weaken agencies’ scientific functions, including halting vital data collection. After Trump’s reelection in 2024, EELP joined an interdisciplinary initiative to identify and preserve key federal datasets on pollution, health, and climate. This effort evolved into a partnership with the Public Environmental Data Partners coalition, through which the Harvard team archived hundreds of crucial files in the Harvard Environment and Law Data (HELD) collection.
External partners:
Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI)
Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC)
Resources:
- HELD Repository
- HELD Codebook
- Harvard Climate Blog: Why We Are Rescuing Government Environmental Data
People
Hannah Perls (she/ella) is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program (EELP) where she supervises…
Stephen Ansolabehere is the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is an expert in public opinion…
Jason Beckfield (he/him/his) is the Robert G. Stone Jr. Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He took his PhD. in Sociology…
Dylan Carlson Sirvent León (he/him) is a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, working on the…
Ana Martinez (She/Her) is a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, working on the Strengthening Communities…
Legal Fellow, Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School
Public Data on Transportation and Climate Change
The US Department of Transportation Climate Change Center was established in 1999 and taken offline in 2025. For almost 30 years, it served as a central public resource for state, regional, urban, and rural transportation planners interested in adapting to climate change, building resilience to extreme weather events, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This project is rebuilding taxpayer-funded online resources that used to be available on the US Department of Transportation’s website, and is part of the larger Salata Transportation Initiative.