ShadeRoute

The city is hot, your route should not be. Introducing climate aware navigation

The problem

NYC summers turn routine walks into real heat and air-quality exposure that standard maps ignore completely, since Google and Apple Maps optimize only for speed or distance. Each summer, an average of approximately 500 New Yorkers die prematurely due to hot weather in New York City, according to the NYC Health-Related Mortality Report. Heat-sensitive walkers, outdoor workers, and elderly residents have no way to pick a route that avoids sun, pollution, and heat stress along the way.

How we're solving it

ShadeRoute scores candidate walking routes on real shade, tree canopy, cooling and water access, and a pollution proxy, using real building, tree, and sun-position data (astral sun math, building-height shadow heuristics) pulled from free public sources.

Users pick concrete filters:

Filter	What it does
🌳 Shade	Stay out of direct sun
😮‍💨 Clean air	Avoid heavy-traffic streets
⚡ Speed	Minimize walking time
❄️ Cooling stops	Indoor relief nearby
💧 Water	Fountains along the way
🚏 Shaded transit	Sheltered waiting areas

With the help of AI agents and LLMs, the best candidate is picked and we explain the tradeoff in a friendly, emoji-rich summary.

The whole thing runs on free, keyless data (GBIF, OSM/Overpass, NYC DCP ArcGIS, Open-Meteo) and free routing (OSRM/Valhalla), so it's a fast, self-contained build with no paid dependencies.