BrightMaps: Shade-Smart walking and Biking

Hey everyone,

I'm Ilyess, (AKA CaptainMuffin) and i'm building BrightMaps, a walking and biking navigation app, and I wanted to share what i've been working on.

The core problem: every navigation app treats "shade" as either nonexistent or a rough approximation. I wanted actual street-level accuracy, which meant fusing three separate data sources:

• Building shadow geometry, computed from building height and footprint data against real-time sun position

• Tree canopy density, from NLCD (National Land Cover Database) raster data at the national level, with higher-resolution OSM tree data layered in for cities with full coverage

• Live sun position, since shade coverage on a given street changes hour to hour, not just season to season

I brought these all together to build a navigation app for walking, biking, and transit that features reliable shade data for every route in the contiguous United States! I love urban planning and anyone who does knows how important shaded streets are. A street with shade can feel 20(f) degrees cooler than an exposed street, which is so important for those who mainly get around their city without a car. Our launch is on August 1st, so make sure to check out the project, it would mean so much to me! Let me know your thoughts as well :)