Environmental Mobility Index
Mapping Urban Inequality Through Satellite Forensics
Overview
Every city has a geography of burden. The neighborhoods where air quality is worst are almost never the neighborhoods with the best public transport. The communities that breathe the most polluted air are almost always the communities least connected to the rest of the city. This is not coincidence. It is the product of decades of planning decisions, industrial siting, and infrastructure investment that systematically concentrated environmental cost in the same places it concentrated mobility exclusion.
The Environmental Mobility Index makes that geography visible. EMI combines satellite imagery, open-source pollution data, and urban mobility infrastructure datasets to produce a city-level forensic map of the overlap between pollution corridors and transport access gaps. EMI is the technology platform of Nexus Points Doc, an independent for-profit research and data company.
The Problem
Cities produce vast amounts of environmental and mobility data. Air quality monitoring stations, satellite imagery, transport network maps, traffic sensors — the data exists. But it is almost never brought together in a form that reveals the structural relationship between pollution and mobility inequality. Each dataset lives in a different institutional silo, managed by a different agency, reported in a different format.
The communities most affected — who know from daily experience that their neighborhood is both polluted and poorly served — have no independent, verifiable evidence of the structural pattern they live inside. EMI closes that gap.
The Methodology
Three layers:
Pollution Corridor Mapping
Sentinel-5P atmospheric data and ground-level sensor readings combined with industrial discharge records and satellite land use analysis to produce a multi-year pollution intensity map.
Mobility Infrastructure Analysis
OpenStreetMap data, GTFS transit feeds, walkability indices, and satellite imagery produce a mobility access index measuring transport density, frequency, quality, and pedestrian accessibility at neighborhood level.
Overlap Analysis
The two layers are cross-referenced to identify zones of double burden — neighborhoods scoring high on pollution and low on mobility access simultaneously.
Who It's For
City governments and urban planners
Independent verification of whether environmental and mobility investments reach the neighborhoods that need them most.
Construction & Real Estate Developers
Independent environmental baseline reports for site decisions before acquisition or development — delivered as a one-time, project-based report rather than a subscription. Provides due diligence evidence for low-friction, high-confidence site selection, EU taxonomy compliance documentation, and differentiation in low-risk zones.
Insurance companies and real estate investors
Insurance companies currently price risk at the postal-code level — too coarse for accurate underwriting. EMI provides neighborhood-level environmental risk scoring as an actuarial input for premium differentiation and portfolio risk assessment today, not just a future indicator. For real estate, EMI functions as a risk disclosure layer supporting mortgage assessment, asset management ESG reporting, and stranded-asset risk identification under EU taxonomy regulation.
Urban planning consultancies
Independent forensic data layer strengthening client deliverables and policy recommendations. For large infrastructure projects (rail, airports, energy corridors) requiring Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), EMI provides a continuous data layer for baseline documentation, construction-phase change detection, and post-construction impact verification — partnering with environmental consultancies preparing EIA submissions.
Journalists and civil society
Structural urban inequality made legible, visually communicable, and citable.
Pilot
The EMI pilot in Sakarya, Turkey is active and operational — not a prototype. Real satellite imagery, air quality, and mobility infrastructure data are being processed and cross-referenced today. Sakarya's dense industrial environment makes it a demanding test case: if the methodology works here, it works in less complex urban contexts.
The next milestone is moving from pilot to the first paid engagement, with the first complete city report expected Q4 2026.
EMI has been accepted into the EIT Urban Mobility Startup Creation Programme by BGI — a European accelerator providing mentorship, business development support, and access to the EIT Urban Mobility ecosystem across Europe.
Status
Active and operational. Real satellite imagery, air quality, and mobility infrastructure data are being processed and cross-referenced today. First complete city report expected Q4 2026.