Smart Surfaces Resilience Opportunity Mapper
Identify resilience opportunities in Baltimore
The Smart Surfaces Coalition's (SSC) Resilience Opportunity Mapper (ROM) is a free, map-based tool that helps you explore how Baltimore's existing surfaces shape heat and stormwater risk, and identify where implementing Smart Surface strategies could do the most good.
Each starting point screens on a different piece of the risk picture – where heat and stormwater hazards are most intense (exposure), and where residents are least equipped to cope (sensitivity and adaptive capacity). You can customize filters once inside a given view.
Opens on the 24 tracts with the highest land surface temperatures that also have households without air conditioning, identifying where heat exposure is most severe and residents have the least protection from it.
Opens on the 15 census tracts carrying the highest baseline runoff that are also heavily paved, identifying where green stormwater infrastructure or depaving strategies could be sited to capture large volumes.
Opens on the 11 tracts that rank among the most vulnerable on several fronts at once, identifying opportunities for investing in environmental justice for Baltimore residents.
More starting points are in development, built around the policy questions cities ask most often. If your team needs one, tell us.
Reopen a session a colleague shared with you, exactly as they left it.
Understanding how to mitigate heat and stormwater risk requires a holistic view. Most relevant datasets live in separate workflows, which makes it hard to reconcile issues or surface key patterns. ROM was built as a single place to do that work.
Developed by the Smart Surfaces Coalition (SSC) and its partners, ROM helps civic leaders understand how existing surfaces shape heat and stormwater risk, and identify where to implement high-impact Smart Surface strategies across a city.
It brings together data on surface conditions, heat and stormwater risk, and social vulnerability alongside modeled estimates of how Smart Surface strategies would reduce temperatures and runoff. Users can filter and query across these layers to locate where risk and intervention potential overlap, then export results directly into planning documents, policy justifications, and grant applications.
Developed in close partnership with the City of Baltimore, with support from the Waverley Street Foundation, as the first city build of a tool designed to scale to additional cities and regions.
Interested in bringing ROM to your city, exploring partnership opportunities, or learning more about Smart Surface strategies? Write to data@smartsurfacescoalition.org.
You can also join our Peer Learning Network or subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed about tool updates and expansion opportunities.