Resources for ENVD 4764: Research Skills for ENVD
EnvironmentFederal
- Environmental Protection Agency
- MyEnvironment
The interactive map feature shows the location of regulated facilities, monitoring sites, water bodies, population density, and other information. The database provides selected geographic statistics and facts about your community. - Search your community
This web page lets you search for facilities, energy, air, UV, watershed, and air issues by ZIP code. The MyEnvironment database contains link s to many of these listed databases, but if you are only looking at one factor in a community, this is a good place to start. - Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO)
Use ECHO to determine whether compliance inspections have been conducted by EPA or state/local governments, violations were detected, and enforcement actions were taken and penalties were assessed.
- Colorado Environment A-Z
This site links to all the various state materials on the environment, such as air pollution and regulations on activities such as lead based paint removal.
Federal
- EPA's Green Building
This site discusses the components and types of green building, as well as funding and award opportunities. - EERE Buildings
The Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has built this home page to all of the various components of energy efficient building and technologies. From here you can find links to programs, such as the High Performance Buildings Database which examines buildings to try and discover the various factors that affect a building's performance.
- Colorado Department of Local Affairs
- Technical Assistance
Here you can find links to web pages on various land-use issues that might be of interest to you, such as Water and Wastewater Management. - Smart Growth/Land Use Planning
This link brings you to the Colorado Office of Smart Growth page. Here you can find links to a variety of web pages, but most useful to your research will be Resource & Publications, where you’ll find a number of publications and web pages including sample land-use policies and Publications and Handouts. Scroll down to the bottom of the Resource & Publications page to find Comprehensive Plans for counties and municipalities. - Local Governments
On this page, click on Resources in the left navigation bar. This Local Government Resources web page provides several links to additional local planning resources: - Local Government Regional Associations
Find out which Colorado region your chosen city or town belongs to, and click on the link for that region to find regional government contact information. - Local Government Information
By clicking on Active Colorado Local Governments, you can find links to the web sites for local governments in Colorado. - Publications
This is actually different from the Publications and Handouts page accessed from the Colorado Office of Smart Growth page. Here you can access PDF documents/assistance guides on county issues, financial management, personnel, smart growth & land-use planning, special districts, and water/wastewater management.
Federal
- Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA)
RITA coordinates the research into transportation systems at the federal level. They link to the publications from research programs, such work on transit and intelligent vehicles.
- Colorado Department of Transportation
This web site gathers materials on transportation in Colorado. - Travel Information
- Planning and Construction
This section contains information on corridor studies, research publications, and state/regional planning information, including minutes of the Statewide Transportation Advisory Committee (STAC). - MPO and Regional Planning
Colorado has 15 Transportation Planning Regions. The 5 urban TRPs are known as Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and there are links to all 5 on this page. - Statistics, Maps and Data
Data include traffic volumes, summary roadway statistics, highway attributes, and some demographics. - Denver Regional Council Of Governments
DRCOG is an association of local governments within these 9 counties: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Gilpin, and Jefferson. - Transportation.
Use the transportation link to locate information on the planning process and find planning documents as well as surveys, modeling tools, and a transportation map application for viewing traffic counts data on the web. There’s also a link to Transit-Oriented Development: pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use developments located within a half-mile of a transit stop. - Regional Transportation District
RTD was created in 1959 to plan and build a public transportation system for a 7-county service area, which includes all of Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Jefferson counties and parts of Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas. For information on projects, facts, etc., click on the Facts\Projects\Criteria menu on the left. From there locate information on current RTD plans and design criteria.
- Statistical Abstract of the United States
This site links to tables for data collected for the US, by all the various agencies. You can browse using the topic areas on the left, or search using the search box on the left. My favorite feature is that you can actually follow the link at the bottom of a table to more data. For example, if you go to this table on marital status: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0056.pdf, at the bottom of the table is the citation with a live link to the US Census Bureau's page for more data, with different granularity. So, Stat Abs is both a source of data and an index/guide to other US data publications and sources. - American Factfinder
This is the main web site for data from the Census Bureau. The majority of what you are looking for can be found by using the Fact Sheet box and putting in your city and state.
What you may want to use this for: This is a good source for current data. You can find demographic data, including population, social, economic, and housing characteristics.
Some considerations: The default data for most communities is from the American Community Survey, which is more current then the 2000 census data but is a survey not a count, therefore when using these numbers always include the margin of error. - Social Explorer CU
This database allows you to create maps and work with Decennial Census data going back to 1790 .
What you may want to use this for: This is a good source for looking at trend data. You can find demographic data, including population, social, economic, and housing characteristics. - Business Patterns
This web site connects to county, ZIP code, and metro business patterns. These sources include information on the total number of establishments, mid-March employment, first quarter and annual payroll, and number of establishments.
We are always happy to answer questions or set up appointments to have a more in-depth discussion of your research.
| Jennie Gerke | Research Desk (2nd floor) OR |
| jennifer.gerke@colorado.edu | govpubs@colorado.edu |
| 303-735-6804 | 303-492-6804 |
