Sources and attribution
Every fact in a study comes from one of these public sources, and names it on screen. Most are United States government works in the public domain. Where a source asks for credit or sets terms, they are stated here and honored in the product.
| Source | Publisher | Terms | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Census Geocoder | U.S. Census Bureau | U.S. public domain | |
| Photon place search | komoot, from OpenStreetMap | ODbL 1.0 data; public instance is fair-use only | Public instance. A production deployment should run its own. |
| National Structures Dataset | U.S. Geological Survey | U.S. public domain | |
| 3D Elevation Program point query | U.S. Geological Survey | U.S. public domain | |
| Hospitals (HIFLD archive) | DHS HIFLD, archived by Esri | U.S. public domain | HIFLD Open was retired in August 2025. Bed counts and trauma levels are frozen at the archive date. |
| Hospital General Information | Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | U.S. public domain | |
| Nursing home provider information | Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | U.S. public domain | |
| Local law enforcement locations | FEMA Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool, from HIFLD | U.S. public domain | Staffing figures come from a 2008 Justice Department census and are dated. |
| Power plants | U.S. Energy Information Administration | U.S. public domain | |
| Electric power transmission lines (HIFLD archive) | DHS HIFLD, archived by Esri | U.S. public domain | Archived. Lines built after the archive date are missing. Substation positions are inferred from line endpoints. |
| Natural gas interstate and intrastate pipelines | U.S. Energy Information Administration | U.S. public domain | Generalized routes, not survey-grade. |
| National Inventory of Dams | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers | U.S. public domain | |
| National Bridge Inventory | Federal Highway Administration, via USDOT BTS | U.S. public domain | |
| Military installations, ranges and training areas | Department of Defense, via USDOT BTS | U.S. public domain | |
| Cellular towers (HIFLD archive) | FCC via DHS HIFLD, archived by Esri | U.S. public domain | Covers licensed cellular sites only and is far from complete. |
| Wastewater treatment plants (ICIS-NPDES) | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | U.S. public domain | |
| Safe Drinking Water Information System | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (ECHO) | U.S. public domain | Lists systems by county served. It does not say which system serves a given street; check your water bill. |
| Hurricane evacuation routes (HIFLD archive) | DHS HIFLD, archived by Esri | U.S. public domain | Archived. Confirm current routes with your county emergency management office. |
| TIGERweb roads and railroads | U.S. Census Bureau | U.S. public domain | |
| National Risk Index | FEMA | U.S. public domain | |
| National Flood Hazard Layer | FEMA | U.S. public domain | |
| Disaster declarations | OpenFEMA | U.S. public domain | FEMA asks that it not be described as endorsing any product that uses this data. |
| Earthquake catalog | U.S. Geological Survey | U.S. public domain | |
| Social Vulnerability Index 2022 | CDC / ATSDR, archived by Esri | U.S. public domain | Built from 2018 to 2022 survey estimates. Small-area figures carry real margins of error. |
| County populations and urban areas | U.S. Census Bureau, hosted by Esri | U.S. public domain | Regional totals count whole counties by where their center falls, so treat them as round figures. |
| Crime Data Explorer | Federal Bureau of Investigation | U.S. public domain | Agencies report voluntarily. A missing or low number can mean a reporting gap, not low crime. |
| Satellite catalogue (orbital elements) | CelesTrak, from U.S. Space Force tracking | Free for any use; downloads are rate-limited | Positions are computed from orbits a few hours to a few days old, good to a few kilometers. Purpose is read from each satellite's published name; nobody outside the operator knows what it is looking at. |
| Classified satellite orbits | Amateur observers, compiled by Mike McCants | Published freely by the observers | The United States publishes no orbits for its classified satellites. These come from hobbyists who watch them through telescopes, can be weeks old, and can be minutes off after a maneuver. |
| Provisional county drug overdose deaths | CDC National Center for Health Statistics | U.S. public domain | Counted from death certificates by the county where the person lived, over the twelve months ending in the month shown. Provisional and several months behind. Counts from one to nine are withheld. |
| Federal prosecutions announced | U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorneys' Offices | U.S. public domain | Announcements matched by place name. Only cases that went to federal court and were announced appear; most local crime never does. |
| Alerts and forecast zones | National Weather Service | U.S. public domain | |
| NOAA Weather Radio transmitters | National Weather Service | U.S. public domain | |
| National Water Prediction Service river gauges | NOAA Office of Water Prediction | U.S. public domain | |
| Active tropical cyclones | NOAA National Hurricane Center | U.S. public domain | |
| Current wildfire perimeters (WFIGS) | National Interagency Fire Center | U.S. public domain | |
| Weather radar mosaic | NOAA nowCOAST | U.S. public domain | |
| Public safety radio licenses | Federal Communications Commission, Universal Licensing System | U.S. public domain | |
| Radio Browser station directory | Radio Browser community | Public domain directory; each broadcaster's stream terms apply | |
| Aircraft positions | adsb.lol contributors | ODbL 1.0 | Unauthenticated public broadcast. May be incomplete, delayed or wrong. Not for navigation. |
| USGS Topo and USGS Imagery base maps | U.S. Geological Survey, The National Map | U.S. public domain | |
| Street base map | OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, OpenStreetMap contributors | ODbL 1.0 data | |
| Terrain elevation tiles | Mapzen terrain tiles on AWS Open Data (USGS 3DEP, SRTM and others) | Open; attribution to the underlying sources | |
| Space weather scales and planetary K index | NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center | U.S. public domain | |
| Local news reporting index | The GDELT Project | Open for any use with attribution; each linked article belongs to its publisher | Headlines matched by keyword. Coverage follows where reporters are, not where events are, and one event can appear many times. |
| News headline feed | Google News; each headline belongs to its publisher | Personal, non-commercial use only | Development fallback when the open news index is unavailable. A paid product needs a licensed news API in its place. |
| FL511 traffic cameras | Florida Department of Transportation | Personal, non-commercial use only under the FL511 terms of use | Shown for your own use. Offering these pictures in a paid product needs written consent from FDOT. |
| Caltrans CCTV | California Department of Transportation | Public data, provided as is; credit Caltrans | |
| WSDOT traffic cameras | Washington State Department of Transportation | Public; credit WSDOT | |
| TxDOT traffic cameras | Texas Department of Transportation | No published reuse terms | Read from the same service TxDOT's own map uses. Ask TxDOT before relying on it commercially. |
| King County traffic cameras | King County Road Services, Washington | Public open data | |
| Austin traffic cameras | City of Austin Transportation and Public Works | Public domain open data | |
| Houston TranStar cameras | Houston TranStar | No published reuse terms | |
| NYC traffic cameras | New York City Department of Transportation | Reuse is by data-sharing agreement with NYC DOT | |
| TripCheck road cameras | Oregon Department of Transportation; camera list compiled by the God's Eye View project (MIT) | Public; credit ODOT | The list of cameras is a fixed copy and will drift as ODOT adds and removes them. |
| DelDOT live traffic video | Delaware Department of Transportation | Public | |
| Terrain mesh | Re:Earth (Eukarya), from Mapterhorn open elevation data | Free public service with attribution; no service guarantee | A production deployment should host its own terrain or use a paid provider. |
| Live traffic, incidents and drive times | TomTom | TomTom developer terms; billed to your own key above the free daily allowance | Measured from vehicles and phones on the road. A quiet road can look clear simply because nobody is on it. |
| World Terrain, aerial imagery and address search | Cesium ion (terrain by Cesium; imagery by Microsoft Bing; search by Google) | Cesium ion terms of service; usage counts against your ion plan | |
| Briefing narration | ElevenLabs text to speech | ElevenLabs terms of service; billed by the character to your own key | A synthetic voice reading text this app wrote from the study. It is not a person and not a broadcast. |
| Tide gauges and tide predictions | NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services | U.S. public domain | Preliminary readings, minutes old. A gauge miles away can read differently from your shoreline. |
| Weather buoys and coastal stations | NOAA National Data Buoy Center | U.S. public domain | |
| Nautical chart | NOAA Office of Coast Survey | U.S. public domain | For orientation only. Not for navigation. |
| Ship positions (AIS) | AISStream.io, from ships' own broadcasts received by volunteers | Free service in beta with no formal terms; needs your own key | Only ships that broadcast and are in range of a receiver appear. Small boats mostly do not, and any ship can switch its transmitter off. |
| World Imagery aerial base map | Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics and the GIS user community | Esri Master License Agreement; commercial use needs an ArcGIS Location Platform account | Used without a key during development. Set up an Esri or Google account before selling access. |
| Photorealistic 3D Tiles | Google Maps Platform | Google Maps Platform Terms of Service, reached through Cesium ion or your own Google key | Shown only when a Cesium ion token or a Google Maps key is configured. The terms forbid storing or printing the tiles, and expect addresses to be found with Google search. |
| Temporary flight restrictions | Federal Aviation Administration | U.S. public domain | Shapes come from the FAA's own TFR map service and times from each NOTAM. Not for flight planning: check the NOTAM with Flight Service before flying. Nationwide restrictions, such as drone bans over critical sites, have no single shape and are listed apart. |
| Satellite fire detections (FIRMS) | NASA LANCE FIRMS, part of the NASA Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) | NASA open data, no restrictions; acknowledgement requested | We acknowledge the use of imagery from the NASA LANCE FIRMS (https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms), part of the NASA Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Each dot is a 375 m or 1 km pixel that was hotter than its surroundings when a satellite passed, a few times a day. Most are farm, prescribed or debris burns; flares, factories and sun glint can show too, and thick cloud hides fires. A detection is not a confirmed wildfire. |
| Internet outage detection (IODA) | Internet Intelligence Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology | Copyright Georgia Tech Research Corporation, all rights reserved; public API with no published reuse licence | Measured for whole states, not counties: IODA publishes no county data. Short events seen in many states at once are usually a measurement problem. Telescope-only events are weak evidence. Ask the IODA team before any paid use. |
| Air quality and smoke forecast | Open-Meteo.com, from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) global forecast | CC BY 4.0; free API for non-commercial use only (no subscriptions or advertising) | Weather data by Open-Meteo.com. A model forecast on a 45 km grid, not a monitor reading, so smoke from a nearby fire can be missed. A paid Homefield would need an Open-Meteo API plan. |
| Located news events (protest, arrests, violence) | The GDELT Project; each linked article belongs to its publisher | Free for any use; any use must cite the GDELT Project and link to https://www.gdeltproject.org/ | Machine-coded from news articles every 15 minutes. Places are city or landmark centers, never street addresses, and are often where the story was written about rather than where it happened. Coding errors are common (a car crash can be read as armed force); open the article before acting on any item. |
| 511GA traffic cameras | Georgia Department of Transportation | No published reuse terms | Read from the list behind 511GA's own camera table. GDOT's documented route is its keyed developer API. About a third of cameras are switched off at any time and are left out. |
| Mi Drive traffic cameras | Michigan Department of Transportation | No published reuse terms; MDOT's Mi Drive disclaimer applies | Read from the list behind MDOT's Mi Drive map. Weather-station cameras update about every ten minutes. |
| COtrip traffic cameras and live video | Colorado Department of Transportation | No published reuse terms | Read from the CARS camera service COtrip is built on. Still cameras update every 5 to 30 minutes; video is live. |
| Gateway traffic cameras | Illinois Department of Transportation (Gateway Traveler Information System), with Lake, DuPage and Kane counties and the Illinois Tollway | Camera list CC BY-SA 2.0; pictures under IDOT's Traffic Information Access/Reuse Policy. Gateway traffic information courtesy of the Illinois Department of Transportation | IDOT asks that each picture be fetched no more than once every five minutes and that reusers register (free). |
Street map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, served by OpenFreeMap. Aircraft positions from adsb.lol contributors under the Open Database License. Use of a government source does not imply that agency's endorsement of this product.