Web-based Tools to Improve Stakeholder Access to Emissions Information

Project Updates

Updated: July 2026

• Major Findings and Updates:
  
  • Built a Laravel-based platform for Uintah Basin energy emissions data. BasinEnergy.info was developed as a centralized web platform for collecting, organizing, and presenting environmental and energy-related information from the Uintah Basin. Laravel web framework was selected because it is a secure, widely used, and scalable web-development framework. It also supports server-side data processing, which is important when working with large and complex datasets. 
    
    
  • Integrated Carbon Mapper, live sensors, Campbell loggers, and historical datasets. The platform can bring together data from several different sources in one place. These sources include Carbon Mapper, field sensors, data loggers, published studies, surveys, and previously collected datasets. This allows users to review both current conditions and long-term historical trends.
    
  • Added dashboards for ozone, produced water, emission trends, and logger data. Dedicated dashboards were developed to present different types of environmental and energy information. These dashboards help users quickly understand ozone levels, produced-water data, emission patterns, and measurements collected by field instruments. The information is organized in a clear and accessible format.
    
  • Added interactive charts, filters, summaries, and API error handling. Users can explore the data through interactive charts and select specific time periods, locations, or variables. Brief summaries are also provided to explain the main trends shown in the data. The platform includes error-handling features so that users receive clear messages when an external data source or sensor is temporarily unavailable.
    
    
  • Added AI-generated explanations using local or external AI engines. We recently added an AI-assisted feature that summarizes complex graphs and datasets in simple language. This helps nontechnical users understand the main findings without having to interpret every chart in detail. The system can use either a locally hosted AI model or an external AI service, depending on the project configuration. 
    
    
  • User management, email verification, and temporary-password generation. Administrative and user-account features were added to improve security and access control. New users can receive verification emails and temporary passwords when accounts are created. These features allow the project team to manage access while protecting sensitive data. This also allows administrators to track the usage of data per each users. 
    
  • Improved the responsive interface and overall website design. The website layout was updated to make the platform easier to use on desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices. Navigation, page structure, data displays, and visual consistency were improved. These changes make the platform more professional and easier for researchers, and the public to use. 
    
    
• Future Perspectives:
  
  • Website performance optimization – mainly bandwidth and computing power optimization. 
  • AI tools for automatic trend detection and anomaly identification. 
  • Add predictive models to estimate future emission trends.  
  • Include interactive maps showing sensor locations, emission sources, and regional environmental conditions.  
  • Automated alerts when unusual pollution levels, sensor failures, or significant changes are detected. 
  • Integration of weather data; mainly to do correlation analysis with various emission data from the Basin. 
    
    
• Problems:
  • None to report.

More Information

 

Web-based Tools to Access to Emissions Information

For this project, we will develop a web-based interface that land managers can use to access measurement-based information about pollutant emissions from the oil and gas industry in the Uinta Basin.  We will involve our stakeholder group and others in project design, execution, and reporting to ensure the collected data meet their needs. Oil and gas companies, regulators, and others can then use this measurement-based, quantitative information to assess the level of pollution emitted by different facilities and equipment types and how those emissions change in response to voluntary and regulatory actions to reduce emissions.

Drawing from experience in launching numerous web-based tools as a group, we will create a web-based interactive interface that allows stakeholders to view, interact with, and download a host of relevant information regarding pollutant emissions from the Uinta Basin oil and gas industry, including those generated on public lands.  The interface will include:

• User-controlled displays of interannual trends in methane, non-methane organics, and NOx emissions in the Uinta Basin.
• Summary information from aircraft and satellite surveys of Uinta Basin methane emissions.
• A user-driven, state-of-the-science chemical model that predicts the air quality outcome of changes to Uinta Basin oil and gas emissions.
• Summaries of key oil and gas-related emission source types, derived from USU studies, industry data, and official emissions inventories.  The summaries will include the percent of total emissions accounted for by each source type, how those emissions have changed over time, and where possible, the locations of the emission sources.
• Information about emissions control technologies currently being tested or adopted in the Uinta Basin, their effectiveness, and their cost.
• Links to external information about Uinta Basin emissions.

This project will provide several decision-making tools for a variety of stakeholder groups and will involve them in the development of those tools. With this information, they will have increased confidence in the emissions-reduction potential of various actions and will be able to ascertain the impact of those actions over time, leading to better air quality and climate outcomes for our region.

We already have some information related to this project online (https://ubenergyexplorer.streamlit.app/).  We expect to have a working web interface with some functionality by mid-2026, and the project will be completed by the end of 2026. Experience from developing the air-quality and weather website, BasinWx, provides the research team skills in, e.g., testing website stability, running on a cloud computing service efficiently, deploying AI tools, etc.