GROUND3D is a nonprofit community planning practice that partners with neighborhoods, community-based organizations, and city agencies to design the tools and strategies they need to confront socio-environmental challenges.

We understand that the climate crisis reshapes culture, land, and local economies, and we help residents respond by strengthening their own capacity to plan, decide, and act.

Through co-design, facilitated engagement, and tailored technical support, GROUND3D combines planning expertise with tool development to close critical data gaps, expand civic participation, and deliver solutions rooted in community priorities.

Closing Data Gaps

The climate crisis is unfolding at the street level. In New York City, lives have been upended by flooded basements, overheated apartments, and neighborhoods cut off by stormwater. Yet most of the data we rely on comes from satellites, remote sensors, or other top-down methods that can’t capture what’s happening block by block.

Ground3D is a community-rooted planning practice that helps neighborhoods close these gaps. We work alongside residents to build the tools, skills, and strategies needed to generate the data that reflects their lived realities.

Breaking Away from Corporate Capture

Today, much of the world’s environmental and spatial data is collected, stored, and monetized by corporations. These systems are designed to generate profit, not to serve the public good. Communities rarely see the benefits of the data created about them—and too often, they don’t even have access to it.

As a practice, we support neighborhoods in building alternatives. We co-design processes and governance structures that allow communities to decide what data to gather, how to govern it, and how to share in the value it creates. A new data economy rooted in transparency, equity, and shared benefit Is possible.

The Power of Community-Engaged Data

We believe the most effective data comes from the people closest to the issue. Community-engaged data collection builds trust while ensuring that local knowledge is part of the solutions being designed. When residents collect and govern their own data, they create a foundation for action that is both more accurate and more just.

GROUND3D exists to make community-led, hyperlocal data, and the planning practices that sustain it, the backbone of more resilient and equitable cities.

We’re building an open-source protocol for community-owned environmental data. This protocol will be the foundation for local data cooperatives and tools that allow residents to:

• Document conditions in their neighborhoods—from flooding to air quality to cultural heritage.

• Decide how that data is stored, shared, and licensed.

• Benefit directly when their contributions inform resilience planning, research, or new solutions.

To make this real, GROUND3D provides services that help communities, CBOs, and city partners build and sustain these systems:

• Product Design + Development → Building mobile + web tools tailored to local needs.

• Strategic Planning → Conducting land use, environmental, and resilience assessments and project management to guide informed decisions within complex social, political, and environmental contexts.

• Community Engagement → Designing strategies and hosting participatory processes to integrate lived experience into data collection and governance.

• Workshop Facilitation → Leading hands-on activities that upskill residents and activate crowdsourcing.

• Technical Assistance → Supporting data management, troubleshooting, and long-term platform maintenance.

Together, the protocol and these services create the infrastructure for community-owned, hyperlocal data to power more just and resilient cities.

GROUND3D was started in 2025 by Zoe Voss Lee and Wil Jones. We met at MIT in the City Planning department, and decided to join forces in our commitment to building technology that strengthens community power.

Zoe is a city planner and technologist whose work focuses on climate justice, data governance, and participatory decision making. Wil brings a background in philanthropy, resilience strategy, and economic development. Together, we saw the need for tools that allow communities not only to create, control, and benefit from hyperlocal spatial data.

The GROUND3D protocol is designed to foster a network of community data tools that leverage low-cost sensors and mobile crowdsourcing to track air quality, monitor extreme heat, or preserve cultural landmarks. Each project follows the same principles: local ownership, equitable governance, and shared benefit.

Our practice is rooted in New York City, and we believe nothing can be accomplished unless it is built in partnership. We work alongside residents, community organizations, and city agencies to design and develop open-source tools, create participatory processes, and facilitate workshops that build skills and capacity. Just as importantly, we stay with communities over the long term, providing technical assistance and stewardship to ensure the tools remain sustainable and in local hands.

The protocol provides the framework, but it is through these partnerships that it becomes real: grounded in the lived experience of neighborhoods and powering a future where communities decide how their own data is created, governed, and shared.