In our first Behind the Alerts blog, Data: The Core Ingredient, we described how LandWatch gathers and monitors data to support site oversight. The next step turns that data into actionable alerts.

LandWatch alerts leverage volumes of data to identify activities that may affect site conditions or interfere with land use restrictions, including activities that could disturb residual contamination, compromise a physical protective structure, or result in noncompliance with institutional controls (ICs). In practice, this means finding data early, swiftly evaluating it, and quickly sending LandWatch alerts to help avoid compliance or safety issues.

LandWatch Data Capture and Processing

Bringing together enormous volumes of data from multiple sources involves complex operations. Sources and formats vary, key details may be missing, and location information is often incomplete. Terradex LandWatch leverages its tailored workflows and data structure to standardize the data capture and alerting process, while allowing flexibility to expand as new data sources are incorporated. Our systems clean incoming data, review for duplicates, recognize previously captured records, and identify data elements that have changed since earlier runs.

After capturing and structuring data, it needs to be characterized by type because different data types (e.g., permits, parcel data) trigger different evaluations and alert conditions. Each type of data, or “event,” needs an identifier, relevant dates, and, where available, a point of contact.

Equally important is location. LandWatch alerts depend on understanding where an activity occurs at a site or its protected IC areas. While some data includes precise coordinates, much of it does not. In many cases, location information must be geocoded, refined, or supplemented. A clean address can often be resolved directly, but incomplete or low-precision data may require multiple steps, such as linking a parcel identifier to an address before geocoding. Once the data is structured, cleaned, and geolocated, LandWatch can evaluate it for alerting.

LandWatch Data Filtering to Create Alerts

For each LandWatch-monitored site, the system filters relevant events, evaluates their proximity to the site (or to subsections of the site), and compares event attributes against site-specific alert criteria. Based on this analysis, the system flags potential alert situations.

This process—filtering data “events” against tailored alert criteria—provides LandWatch alerts that reflect a set of conditions indicating whether an activity actually impacts site conditions or compliance requirements, based on proximity, activity type, and site-specific criteria.

The process of customizing alert criteria reflects client preferences and site-specific concerns, ensuring that LandWatch alerts align with each organization’s compliance obligations and risk management criteria. For instance, many clients only want to be alerted if an excavation is below a certain depth, potentially due to underground engineering controls or contaminated groundwater plumes. Terradex’s processing sets parameters to validate excavation tickets and allow alerts only for excavations beyond a certain depth, ensuring that only the most meaningful tickets become alerts.

LandWatch Verification for Further Alert Refinement

While tailored data operations improve efficiency, ensuring accurate LandWatch alerts requires even more attention. The LandWatch process also involves human operators who review each flagged event, validate details, refine the location when necessary using multiple geocoding approaches or unstructured descriptions, and issue alerts in accordance with client-specific preferences. This verification step helps reduce false positives and provides additional confidence that the alert reflects a real condition that may require attention.

LandWatch Alert Visibility and Presentation

Alerts can be distributed to multiple stakeholders, including property owners, environmental managers, regulators, and other affected parties. The alerts present details about the activity at issue and, within navigable maps, juxtapose the alert and site details. This intuitive, shared visibility helps ensure that potential issues are identified and addressed early, thereby supporting the continued protection of the IC.

Timely Alerts Provide Long-Term Protection

The value of an alert lies not just in what it identifies, but in when it is identified. Early visibility into site activity allows clients to evaluate issues before site conditions are disrupted or they escalate into compliance problems or operational delays. This is particularly important for sites with ICs, where managing ongoing activities is critical to ensure contamination remains contained and protective measures remain effective over the long term.

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To learn more about how LandWatch alerts work, you can Request a Demo or reach out to us directly at info@terradex.com.

The core ingredient for LandWatch® is data. But what exactly does LandWatch “watch”? Just as a security guard watches people, cars, behavior, and movement, Terradex watches (monitors) data continuously. The data we monitor includes land-use records, environmental permits, regulatory notices, property transfers, and other sources that reveal changes and activities that could affect institutional controls, land use restrictions, or otherwise pose compliance or environmental risks at individual properties or other defined areas of interest.

Because it serves as the foundation of LandWatch, the data we rely on must be accurate, relevant, comprehensive, and collected continuously to avoid gaps. This data collection process requires a clear understanding of what matters for compliance and redevelopment, and the persistence to track it down.

Accessing the various data sources we need requires both technical and substantive know-how. Much of the data we depend on cannot be easily found on commercial platforms and, instead, involves deep reaches into public sources. While some datasets can be downloaded directly, many others require Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each agency has its own procedure, sometimes requiring parcel-level detail, and there is no standard form to follow. Other sources must be accessed through APIs or retrieved using custom code.

During the LandWatch site setup process, the Terradex team identifies the specific data types needed for each site and the sources that can provide them. We then implement operational procedures to ensure a consistent and current data supply, typically aligned with each data source’s refresh frequency, usually ranging from daily to monthly.

Creating this continuous flow of data presents challenges. New information needs to arrive quickly, completely, and without interruption. Think of it like tracking the changing price of a flight to New York each day, rather than a one-time flight search. However, very little of the data we use is automatically “pushed” to us through established delivery systems. Instead, most follow a “pull” model, meaning the Terradex team must actively initiate each collection cycle, submitting FOIA requests or taking other steps to retrieve the data.

Herein lies the value of LandWatch. The complexity of this process, which involves tracking dozens of sources that update at different intervals and in various formats, makes automation and consistency critical. Maintaining this flow of timely, verified data allows LandWatch to alert clients the moment a new risk or regulatory change appears, often long before it becomes an issue on the ground.

Our operational systems sustain that flow. LandWatch configures each site with procedures that match the cadence of its data sources, ensuring that updates are captured, processed, and delivered with minimal delay. With this foundation in place, LandWatch continuously monitors for changes that signal potential risks or compliance concerns, helping clients stay informed and ready to act.

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To learn more about the different types of data we monitor, visit our Toolbox page or Request a Demo to see how Terradex LandWatch can support your projects.