Multidimensional Environmental Index for Bernalillo County

Project Summary:

The objective of this workshop was to convene local expert and lived experience perspectives on cumulative impacts of environmental quality to co-generate a multidimensional environmental index (MEI) for Bernalillo County using geospatial data. Over the course of three workshop days (Saturday, September 6; Saturday, September 13; and Saturday, October 25, 2025)^, this project convened 13 local leaders in community environmental advocacy, government, academic research, and public health to discuss the development of a map of vulnerable communities in Bernalillo County. The goal of developing an MEI is to generate a measure of cumulative impacts on environmental health and quality by integrating several types of data (e.g. socioeconomic, health outcome, and environmental, etc.) into a single quantitative measure to provide comparisons across space or time. Cumulative impacts are the recognition of environmental, socioeconomic, and human health stressors as additive rather than disparate measures of environmental health. This workshop promoted collaborative decision making in the process of generating the MEI by including community voice in science and policy within Bernalillo County. The index generated by this workshop is intended to inform decision making regarding the placement of industrial facilities, resource allocation, and environmentally impactful developments. At the end of the workshop series attendees agreed that they would like to continue working on this project and were willing to promote further development and use of the accompanying webtool for increasing environmental health across Bernalillo County.

A public dashboard with the resulting maps methods, indices, and visualizations determined in the workshop is currently under development.