Lawyers Data Support Tool: Building a Data-driven Case Against Polluters
Environmental information in the Netherlands is technically public but practically out of reach for the people who need it most. Data on protected areas, livestock emissions, pesticide measurements, and other environmental indicators is scattered across dozens of government systems, stored in incompatible formats, and complex enough to be interpretable only by specialists. For NGOs, lawyers, and citizens trying to build legal cases or challenge polluters, this fragmentation creates a serious disadvantage: the information exists, but the effort required to find, combine, and make sense of it is prohibitive. The result is an accountability gap between what the law permits and what communities can realistically enforce.
To close that gap, the team developed an interactive, web-based mapping platform that integrates thirteen environmental datasets relevant to protection and enforcement in the Netherlands, ranging from Natura 2000 protected areas to livestock emissions and pesticide monitoring points. Users can explore spatial relationships between environmental layers, draw proximity buffers around farms or monitoring stations, and export their findings as traceable files suitable for legal preparation. The tool was designed with the legal community specifically in mind, requiring careful attention to accuracy, traceability, and the standards of evidence that court proceedings demand. By turning fragmented public data into a usable, legally legible interface, the platform gives civil society a more equal footing when holding polluters to account.