A Spatial Dataset for Identifying Disadvantaged Communities Facing Cumulative Climate and Economic Burdens in the United States

The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) was developed by the U.S. federal government in 2021 to identify and support marginalized communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. This tool identifies disadvantaged communities based on the presence of low-income residents and one of eight climate, environmental, or health-related burden categories. Communities that meet these criteria were eligible for funding from the White House Justice40 initiative, which sought to direct 40% of overall benefits from investments in climate, clean energy, and sustainable housing into these communities, designated as Justice40 communities. While CEJST includes a wide range of indicators to evaluate burden categories and designate census tracts as Justice40 communities, it does not include any measure of overall community risk or harm resulting from multiple and overlapping burdens. We sought to address this limitation and extend the binary CEJST framework by creating an open geospatial dataset and web-based tool that includes new variables to quantify the cumulative impacts of CEJST burden categories and indicators that comprise these categories. For each census tract in the U.S., we computed new cumulative burden scores representing the total number of burden categories and indicator thresholds exceeded according to the CEJST guidelines, as well as spatial cluster classifications (hot spot, non-significant, or cold spot) based on both the number of burden categories and indicator thresholds exceeded. By analyzing and incorporating cumulative burdens using cutting-edge geospatial techniques, this extended CEJST dataset and tool will promote more meaningful and equitable investment to support overburdened disadvantaged communities facing the greatest risk from climate change.