A short tour of the Strata web tool: free sign-in, the site map, the site page, what is free and what is Pro, and who is building it with us. Demo release 0.1 — screens below are illustrative mock-ups of the pilot interface, built on illustrative sites and values while the 2027 pilot produces real ones.
Strata is built for the person who has five minutes and one question about one site, so the web tool opens on a map, asks for nothing more than an email address, and puts every number a reader needs on a single site page. The demo release below runs on illustrative sites and values while the 2027 pilot produces real ones, which is why every screen carries a sand-coloured strip saying so.
You type an email address and Strata sends a sign-in link, with no password to remember and no card to enter. If you would rather look around first, the second button opens the full demo without an account. The sign-in screen also lists what the tool does and what each plan includes, so nobody has to click through a pricing page to find out that the map, the indicators and the downloads cost nothing.
Each dot is a Strata site, sized by its disturbed footprint and coloured by status: an open ring for pre-construction, yellow for under construction, green for operating and red for any site with an open alert. The left column sums up what is on screen (sites shown, sites not yet built, hectares disturbed, open alerts), lets you filter by value chain stage and status, and lists the sites with alerts at the top. Search works across site codes, materials and countries, and the map pans and zooms with a mouse, a trackpad or a finger.
The layers panel switches on the European Ground Motion Service coverage, which shows at a glance which sites can carry a ground motion indicator and which, such as sites in Greenland, cannot.
Selecting a site opens its page on the right. The top block gives the baseline year, the 2026 footprint, the change since the baseline and the year works started. The chart below plots the disturbed footprint every year since 2019, with the baseline drawn as a dashed line and the start of works in yellow, so the moment a landscape began to change is visible without reading a table. The footprint outline sets the baseline shape against the latest one inside a 500 metre buffer with a scale bar, and the indicator list covers vegetation loss within 5 kilometres, the share inside Natura 2000, water and tailings surface, ground motion and the land the footprint replaced.
Alerts are written to inform rather than accuse: each one names the threshold that was crossed and says plainly that it is flagged for review, not a finding of non-compliance. The last line of every page shows whether the promoter has sent a response, and the attribution for every dataset behind the numbers.
| Function | What it does | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Site map | Browse every Strategic Project site by stage, material, status and alerts, with zoom and search | Free |
| Pre-construction baseline | Fixes the undisturbed landscape in the last full year before works start | Free |
| Annual indicators | Disturbed footprint, buffer vegetation loss, water and tailings extent, ground motion and land converted | Free |
| Change charts | Year-on-year series with the baseline and works start marked | Free |
| Footprint outline | Baseline shape against the latest footprint, with buffer and scale bar | Free |
| Data export and citation | CSV and GeoJSON per site, with licence and attribution lines included | Free |
| Right of reply | Promoter responses linked from each site page | Free |
| Alerts | Email when footprint growth, Natura 2000 buffer loss or ground motion passes a threshold | Pro |
| Extra layers | Natura 2000 boundaries and EGMS point data on the map | Pro |
| Custom sites | Your own polygons, with indicators run every quarter | Pro |
| API and data packs | Programmatic access and audit-ready packs for due diligence files | Pro |
The free plan covers everything a resident, journalist, student or permitting officer is likely to need. Pro is for teams that track many sites at once, such as lenders, battery makers and consultancies, and is priced on request while the pilot runs.
Strata is led by Transitions Lab in Delft, which writes the method, runs the field research that sits beside the satellite record and publishes the results. Pyropower and Social Innovation Europe are partners on the project, bringing industry experience of the energy and materials transition and reach into the communities and civil society organisations that live with new extractive sites.
The interface follows the same quiet design language as our research pages: a paper-white background, square corners, one green for things that are working, yellow for things in progress and red only where something needs a second look. Labels sit in a monospaced type so codes, years and hectares line up, and headings stay in plain sentence case. The goal is a screen you can read on a phone at a council meeting as easily as on a desk monitor.
The demo is open now with illustrative data, and pilot sites with real indicators will replace it during 2027. If you want early access, a site added to the pilot or a walkthrough for your team, get in touch.
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