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Stanford students unveil Menlo Park sustainability dashboard; team says city is about 30% toward 2030 zero‑carbon goal
Summary
A Stanford team presented an ArcGIS dashboard to Menlo Park’s Environmental Quality Commission on May 20 that visualizes electrification, emissions trends and community actions; students said the city is roughly 30% of the way to its 2030 zero‑carbon target and outlined steps for city staff to keep the dashboard current.
A Stanford student team presented an ArcGIS‑based sustainability dashboard to the Menlo Park Environmental Quality Commission on May 20, showing visualizations of local electrification, building emissions and a progress tracker toward the city’s 2030 zero‑carbon goal.
The team — Lily Glazer, Skye Elizabeth Adams and Sammy Smith — said the dashboard packages complex datasets into interactive maps, charts and “community stories” to make climate information more accessible to residents and decision‑makers. "Our goal is to create a positive and forward‑looking dashboard that communicates Menlo Park's vision for a sustainable future," Glazer said.
The presentation emphasized usability and maintainability. Sammy Smith told commissioners the team cleaned and re‑tabulated city data into ArcGIS‑friendly CSVs and produced short instructional videos so city staff can refresh the dashboard by exporting updated CSVs and re‑uploading them to ArcGIS. "We calculated that, based on the City of Menlo Park's goal to be net zero by 2030 … the City of Menlo Park's 30% of the way there," Smith said, framing the figure as a progress indicator intended to motivate resident engagement.
Why it matters: The dashboard is intended to be both an accountability tool and a public engagement vehicle. It pairs emissions and electrification data with links to local programs (for example, electrification rebates and links to eligibility checks) and placeholders for resident stories that the team said would make technical data relatable. Commissioners and public commenters focused on two operational questions: (1) how the city will sustain updates over time, and (2) how granular the data can be without compromising privacy.
Commissioner Brian Kissel asked specifically whether the data‑cleaning steps could be automated to reduce staff workload. Smith described a manual reformatting the team performed to align workbook tabs with ArcGIS input expectations and said the intended workflow is for city staff to enter updated values in the workbook, download relevant tabs as CSVs, and upload them to refresh the dashboard. The students also said they left room in the template for staff to add more community stories and videos; Rachel Lunder, the city’s Sustainability Manager, confirmed the city has a new GIS specialist who will help onboard the dashboard to the city GIS and open data portal after the course ends.
Public commenters recommended additional features: Brian Schmidt (Animal Spark) asked about embedding project videos and obtaining vehicle‑registration data at the Menlo Park level. Bruce Karney (Carbon Free Mountain View) urged frequent content refreshes and more homeowner case studies rather than focusing primarily on municipal properties.
The presentation and questions led to several near‑term steps: the student team will complete the project by June 1; staff plans a handoff meeting with the new GIS specialist; and the city expects to refresh some datasets (including 2025 greenhouse gas data from the regional RICAPS process) when those become available.
The EQC did not take formal action on the dashboard at the meeting; staff and commissioners agreed to follow up on implementation and content priorities. The team requested and received feedback on how to surface resident‑facing actions (for example, eligibility checks and program links) more prominently so the dashboard can both inform and drive local climate choices.
