CEA SiteScout: application of a data-driven screening tool for controlled environment agriculture site selection and resource estimation in U.S. communities

By Aghajanzadeh, Huntington, Hodson +2Frontiers in Sustainable Food SystemsOct 2, 2026

Score████░░░░░░4.3

VerdictWorth a reader's time today.

Abstract

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is expanding rapidly, but selecting suitable sites for new facilities remains a complex challenge due to the interplay of climate, infrastructure, logistics, economic, policy, and other factors. We present CEA SiteScout, an interactive decision-support tool that integrates multiple public datasets to generate site-specific overviews and energy analyses for screening purposes, providing the critical foundation for data-driven CEA site evaluation in the US. By aggregating national and, for selected spotlight communities, regional environmental, social, and economic datasets into one intuitive platform, CEA SiteScout helps users visualize nearby resources and constraints relevant to site selection. Underpinned by a simplified, validated energy-water model ( Hodson et al., 2026 ), this tool also provides order-of-magnitude estimates of resource consumption for a variety of representative CEA configurations. We demonstrate the application of CEA SiteScout in five spotlight U.S. communities: York County, Pennsylvania; Riverside, California; Augusta and surrounding rural areas, Georgia; Kaua'i, Hawai'i; and the Western Lake Erie Region, Ohio and Michigan. Results from these communities illustrate how diverse regional contexts influence the suitability of different technologies, resource demands, and policy opportunities. This work highlights how integrated screening tools can reduce early-stage risk for growers, investors, and policymakers, filling a gap in current siting analyses, which often lack comprehensive, accessible, and stakeholder-informed approaches.

Arian Aghajanzadeh, Tyler Huntington, Abigayle Hodson, Robinson Negron-Juarez, Jennifer Stokes-Draut

The editor's rubric

Heuristic review

Dimension	Level	Weight	What that level means
Leverage	████░ 4	16%	A general-purpose tool used across several fields (Adam, ResNet, LoRA, next-generation sequencing).
Magnitude	██░░░ 2	20%	Solid incremental gain on a meaningful problem.
Evidence	███░░ 3	20%	Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.
Novelty	██░░░ 2	10%	A new combination of known ideas.
Trajectory	██░░░ 2	14%	Some room to improve with obvious engineering.
Stakes	███░░ 3	20%	Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.

Editor’s rationale

Heuristic triage from title and abstract text only, not a reading of the paper. Cues found: method (we propose, we report); breadth (many tasks, programmable); verification (multiple benchmarks, experimental validation); stakes (energy, climate). Red flags: derivative (we apply).

How the score was computed

rank-2026-09-29

Score████░░░░░░4.3

Score = 10 × (75% × adjusted merit / 10 + 15% × attention + 10% × freshness)

Merit: 5.4 / 10; Weighted rubric, evidence-gated.
Adjusted merit: 4.7 / 10; Shrunk toward the desk prior by editor confidence (46%).
Attention: 0%; Citations, upvotes, points, mentions.
Freshness: 85%; Half-life decay since publication.

Citations0 (reference 15, via openalex, Oct 4, 2026, 07:04 UTC)
Field-weighted citation impact0 (reference 3, via openalex, Oct 4, 2026, 07:04 UTC)

The record

Reviewed by heuristic-v2 on Oct 4, 2026, 07:04 UTC. Paper type: method.
Categories: Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies, Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact, Urban Agriculture and Sustainability, Water Science and Technology, Environmental Science
BRIEF, No.4 in the Climate & Energy edition of October 4, 2026.