FAQs

We use all the available information about the multiple pollutants and chemicals that are generated. Just for illustration purposes, the U.S. analyses on our database are comprised of more than 770 individually listed chemicals and 33 chemical categories covered by the U.S. PRTR (i.e., the TRI Program). All the individual facilities that manufacture, process, or otherwise use these chemicals, in amounts above what the regulatory levels establish in each region, must submit annual reports for each chemical. Our data is based on those reports.

Our short video Understanding Our Impact Scores will provide you with more information on this topic. You will also find the video our YouTube channel @GrupoISDE.

While corporate plans, disclosures and letters have traditionally been used as proxies for the environmental situation, we strongly believe that it is time to focus on the real impact emerging from chemical discharge and waste production.

Find more about our stance and objectives by watching our video on Why does TERAIN make a difference? You will also find it on our YouTube channel @GrupoISDE.

Industrial facilities may generate a long list of different pollutants. The layout in these makes it difficult to assess the environmental impact of a company as well as to make comparisons. We have designed our own methodology to sort these pollutants and create different scores. Our scores allow us to compare the environmental impact of different facilities and companies.

Our team includes more than 30 scientists and experts. We have been collaborating with international experts in the fields of business, computer science, chemistry, and biology, among others. TERAIN’s core intellectual capital is connected to the Sustainability Research Team (SRT) at University of Granada (UGR). The UGR is one of the top 200 best universities in the world according to the Shanghai University Ranking. In addition, the SRT is one of the most productive European research groups in the field of business and sustainability. The SRT members have published in top tier academic journals and are among the principal investigators in research grants funded by prestigious national and international organizations.

You will find more details about us and our project at our webpage.

Our final indexes are designed to be easy to understand for any interested actors. Our indexes are useful for multiple decision makers, including executives, regulators, academics, investors, activists, or consumers.

If you are looking for a single impact score, we encourage you to consider our “Total Release and Transfer Score”. The "Total Release and Transfer Score" is an estimate of environmental record based on the quantity released (as reported to an official PRTR database) and the toxicity (according to international standards) of all the main toxic chemicals from a specific facility that enter the air, water and land, and the amount and toxicity of chemicals that are transferred to a facility geographically or physically separated from the reporting facilities.

Our short video Understanding Our Impact Scores will provide you with more information on this topic. You will also find the video our YouTube channel @GrupoISDE.

No, we are extending our analytical outputs by adding new additional indexes and facilities from additional regions. Up until now, we have been focusing on the European Union and the US, but we will include more regions soon.

All our analytics and derived information are available for you to use for free. You will be able to find facilities, companies, and regions of your interest in our database. We provide multiple free indexes related to the environmental risks of your unit of analysis. TERAIN Premium will allow you to download our results in multiple formats for your own convenience.

Our How to section contains 4 tutorials with further details on how TERAIN works. You will also find them on our YouTube channel @GrupoISDE.

Although all our analytics and derived information are available for free consultation, data exports are only available as a premium feature. Our video How to obtain datasets for research will give you further instructions on how it works. If you are looking for the specifications of our methodology and the origins of our data, visit our webpage.

We do not accept corporate sponsors to guarantee full independence. However, we are happy to consider possible donations from individual citizens, philanthropists, civil society organizations, foundations, and research organizations. We are aware of the relevant role that neutral sponsors have in funding relevant research.

We always try to provide our full battery of indexes for all the facilities, companies, and regions. However, the indexes that finally appear depend on the availability of the data. The data that builds our scores comes directly from mandatory registers (PRTR's) of multiple countries. We use PRTR's because they are usually the most reliable source of information about the emissions that industrial facilities produce. However, it is important to keep in mind that facilities, companies, and regions only have to report the transfer and release of pollutants when they go above a certain fixed threshold. If there is missing data in a given year, it usually means that the transfer and release of pollutants did not reach the threshold and thus, has not been reported. In any case, some facilities, companies, and regions may have mistakenly omitted the provision of that information.

We provide access to TERAIN's analytics for free. If you or your organization subscribe to TERAIN Premium, you will have the opportunity to download the results in convenient formats and also access to downloaded indexes of multiple facilities, companies, or regions simultaneously. This will help you to get an holistic view of all the industries and regions of your interest. Contact us for information regarding our pricing policies.

Check our video How to obtain datasets for research for further information on the functioning of our premium search engine.

In most of the other indexes, the numbers reflected are percentiles. Which means that the score on those indexes reflect the frequency of the data in context. So, even if it seems counterintuitive, the scenario described in this question is feasible.

We have created a series of video tutorials that show how to use our search engines, as well as some other explanatory videos regarding our work. Click here to watch any of them or go to https://https://youtube.com/@GrupoISDE.