Community leaders and administrators now have a more powerful tool for understanding their communities’ economic strengths and vulnerabilities, thanks to the newly enhanced National Economic Resilience Data Explorer (NERDE). The online data portal’s enhanced second edition makes it easier for users to create economic development plans, improve resilience, and apply for economic assistance and grants.

NERDE first launched as a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) in 2022. Since then, both the number of users and scope of its resources have grown tremendously.

“We spent the past year and a half talking to as many user groups as we could to learn exactly how people are using the portal, and what data was important to them,” explained Iain Reed Hyde, Director of the National Economic Research and Resilience Center at Argonne. “We learned that NERDE has been highly useful for grant applications, comprehensive economic development strategies, and market research. It has helped users to better understand their strengths. And what challenges to focus on.”

NERDE data includes statistics regarding local economic distress, employment and gross domestic product, local industry clusters, climate risk and innovation. The platform provides this information for more than 3,000 counties and for every economic development district in the United States.

The new release presents data in ways that are more consistent with administrators’ and developers’ anticipated use. This makes it easier for users to compare their community’s strengths and weaknesses to those of neighboring communities. The portal also includes a redesigned local “snapshot” called “My Community Report, which provides different metrics based on the user’s geographic location (e.g., rural vs. urban). Users can explore data at the neighborhood level or select multiple counties simultaneously to create a custom development district to analyze.

In addition to more capabilities, the new edition of NERDE provides more types of data. Users can access information from Argonne’s Economic Development Capacity Index (EDCI), view metrics on patent claims and Small Business Innovation Research grants, access data and maps regarding potential risks to communities posed by climate change, and analyze U.S. Census trade data at the state level.

In fact, U.S. Census played a significant role in NERDE’s upgrade. The NERDE development team participated in a 12-week technology development “sprint” that focused on building data platforms for public officials. The sprint was part of the U.S Census Bureau’s Open Innovation Labs’ The Opportunity Project (TOP).

Please join the NERDE development team for a comprehensive training webinar on Tuesday, March 5 at 12 p.m. CT, or on Monday, March 18 at 2 p.m. CT. Register here to receive a meeting link.

The full press release can be found here.

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