About Plattow

Plattow is an ecological hazard atlas for any U.S. address. Type a property, see the public-data picture of the land underneath it — flood zones, natural hazards, elevation, transportation noise, parcels, public lands, loan eligibility — on one interactive map.

Why this exists

The data behind a home purchase is scattered across a dozen U.S. agencies. FEMA publishes flood maps. USDA publishes loan eligibility polygons. USGS publishes elevation. EPA tracks Superfund sites. BTS publishes transportation noise. BLM publishes federal land boundaries. Each agency has its own viewer; none of them talk to each other. A first-time homebuyer would need to know all of these viewers existed and have the patience to check each one separately — which means in practice, almost no one does.

Plattow is a single search box that does the lookup against all of them in parallel and stacks the answers on one map. It's not a replacement for a title company, a flood-zone determination, or a professional inspection. It's the picture a thoughtful buyer would build themselves if they had the time.

How it works

Plattow runs entirely in your browser. When you type an address, your browser geocodes it via the U.S. Census, then fires parallel queries to USDA, FEMA, USGS, EPA, BTS, BLM, and the National Transportation Atlas. The answers come back, get color-coded by severity, and populate the report drawer at the bottom of the screen. The interactive map renders the same public data as live overlays, so you can pan around and see the same information for neighboring properties too.

There is no Plattow backend. There is no account. There is nothing to log in to. The data sources are the same ones the federal agencies publish themselves — Plattow just queries them in one motion.

What Plattow is not

Plattow is not legal advice, not insurance advice, not loan pre-approval, not a flood-zone determination, and not a title search. It is informational. If you are making a decision with money on the line, treat what you see here as the starting point for conversations with a real estate agent, a lender, an insurance broker, a title company, and where appropriate, an inspector or surveyor.

Who built this

Plattow is a small independent project. If you have feedback, corrections, or ideas, email [email protected].