PLACES
======

The `Private-Land Conservation Evidence System <https://placeslab.org/places/>`_ (PLACES) is a data synthesis platform for parcel data in the contiguous United States (CONUS).

PLACES connects geographic data on geospatial :ref:`parcel boundaries <Parcel boundaries>`, :ref:`tax assessor records <Tax assessor records>`, and sales :ref:`transactions <Transactions>`. Parcel boundaries allow us to retrieve characteristics of land, buildings, land cover, and local demographics from public data sources, including Earth observation satellites (:ref:`predictors <Predictors>`). We use these rich datasets to explore a range of questions of interest to policy makers and conservation planners (see `placeslab.org/research <https://placeslab.org/research>`_).

PLACES contains data on ownership, buildings, protection investments, infrastructure, demographics, geophysical characteristics, long-term land cover change, and other variables for more than 130 million parcels in more than 2,700 counties.

The software is built on top of `Python <https://www.python.org/>`_'s extensive open-source ecosystem, namely `geopandas <https://geopandas.org/en/stable/>`_, `GDAL/OSGeo <https://www.osgeo.org/>`_, and `QGIS <https://qgis.org/en/site/>`_.

Boston University's PLACES instance is deployed on the `Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center <https://www.bu.edu/tech/support/research/rcs/mghpcc/>`_.

PLACES data has been used in several dozen peer-reviewed empirical analyses in the realm of conservation effectiveness, environmental policy, and environmental economics: `list of publications <https://placeslab.org/publications/>`_.

Learn more about the software, data access, and research applications: `placeslab.org/places <https://placeslab.org/places/>`_