About Geothenes

About

Geothenes is a small independent project run by the Geothenes operator. You ask a question in plain English; an AI model (Claude, by Anthropic) writes SQL against public datasets, runs it, and shows every query it ran.

Answers are generated automatically and can be wrong or incomplete: check the trace before relying on a number. Don't use Geothenes for legal, financial, safety or engineering decisions.

Free and paid

• Free: 3 questions a day per network, without follow-up questions, land-cover sampling at a chosen point, terrain statistics, elevation profiles, least-cost routes or raster values at a chosen point. Free questions can look up ground elevation at up to 10 points at a time from the 10 m DEM, flood zones, sea-level rise and seismic hazard at data centers and metro areas, and their maps, and are answered by a smaller, faster model.
• Geothenes pass: a one-time payment of US$5 for 50 questions, including follow-up questions, land-cover sampling at any point, terrain statistics, elevation profiles, least-cost routes, 1 m DEM elevations, and seismic hazard, sea-level rise and climate values at any point, answered by the larger model. It is not a subscription, and you are never charged again automatically.

Each question or follow-up uses one credit, including answers that say the data can't answer it. If a question fails with an error, its credit is returned automatically.

Credits don't expire.

If Geothenes shuts down, notice will be posted here at least 30 days ahead, and unused credits will be refunded on request.

Paid questions may pause briefly when the service is busy or a daily safety limit is reached; your credits are kept. A follow-up can continue an answer for up to about 2 hours (less if the server restarts).

Your pass code

There are no accounts. After payment your pass code is saved in this browser. Use Show code to copy it, and Have a code? to enter it on another device or browser.

Anyone with the code can use its remaining questions, so keep it private.

Lost it? Write to the support address on your Stripe receipt from the email address you paid with, and the code will be sent to you again.

Refunds

A pass is refundable on request within 14 days of purchase if none of its questions has been used. After a question has been used it is non-refundable, except where the law requires otherwise.

Questions that fail with an error are never charged. A refunded pass stops working, and so does a pass while a payment dispute is open.

To ask for a refund, write to the support address on your Stripe receipt from the email address you paid with.

Contact

Geothenes is run by the Geothenes operator. For questions, refunds and lost pass codes, write to the support address on your Stripe receipt.

Privacy

• Your question is sent to Anthropic to produce the answer (for a follow-up, with the earlier questions and answers in that conversation), so please don't put personal information in it.
• Your IP address is used only to enforce the free limit and similar abuse limits. It is held in server memory for up to 24 hours and never written to a database.
• Follow-up context (your recent questions and answers) is held in server memory for up to 2 hours.
• Your pass code is kept in your browser's storage, and it is removed from the server's logs. The hosting provider and the server keep standard request logs.
• Stripe handles the payment, and Geothenes never sees your card number. Geothenes only asks Stripe whether the checkout was paid, and stores your remaining credits on that Stripe payment record.
• There are no ads, analytics or tracking cookies.
• The map loads tiles from OpenFreeMap and code libraries from unpkg.com, which see your IP address like any website.
• For elevation questions the server reads USGS's public elevation data itself; your IP address and your question are not sent to USGS.

Data and credits

• Data centers © Ringmast4r - Global-Data-Center-Map. Locations vary in precision (building, city or country centroid) and are not verified ground truth: the map draws a city-level location as a ring, and site-level answers (flood zones, seismic hazard, water stress, climate, land cover at a facility) use only building-precise locations.
• Cameras © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), compiled by Finding Flock. City boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary files. Geothenes' version of the camera table is free to download under the same license.
• Population: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2023. City points for data-center cities whose listings have no coordinates: U.S. Census Bureau, 2026 Gazetteer Files.
• Land cover: NOAA Office for Coastal Management, C-CAP 2021 regional land cover, 30 m.
• Elevation: USGS 3DEP. USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) DEMs (the 10 m seamless DEM, and 1 m DEMs where they exist), read from USGS's public data as each question needs them. Data available from U.S. Geological Survey, National Geospatial Program. Public domain. US only.
• Country statistics: Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0) and the producers it credits (Ember, U.S. EIA, World Bank, Global Carbon Budget, UN, UNDP, Copernicus ERA5), each under its own license. Country boundaries: Made with Natural Earth. Every indicator with its producer, license and required notice is listed on About the data.
• Boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Cartographic Boundary Files (1:5,000,000); metro/micro areas per OMB July 2023 delineations. Public domain (a U.S. government work). Drawn at 1:5,000,000 (generalized), so edges are approximate when you zoom in closely; not legal boundaries. Geothenes' tables derived from them are not an official Census Bureau product, and the Census Bureau has not reviewed or endorsed them.
• Water risk: WRI Aqueduct 4.0 (Kuzma et al. 2023, https://doi.org/10.46830/writn.23.00061; data: https://www.wri.org/data/aqueduct-global-maps-40-data), © 2023 World Resources Institute, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), provided as is, without warranty; modified by Geothenes (subset of indicators, joined to data-center locations). Basin keys: HydroBASINS level 6, © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. (2006-2022), used under license. Geothenes shows the values at mapped data centers only: no basin outlines, overlays or downloads. Full notices: About the data.
  • Copyright 2023 World Resources Institute
  • This dataset is licensed in accordance with the terms of a creative commons license (CC BY 4.0).
  • Copyright 2023 World Resources Institute. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
  • Disclaimer: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
  • This product Geothenes incorporates data from the HydroSHEDS version 1 database which is © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. (2006-2022) and has been used herein under license. WWF has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated within Geothenes, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. Portions of the HydroSHEDS v1 database incorporate data which are the intellectual property rights of © USGS (2006-2008), NASA (2000-2005), ESRI (1992-1998), CIAT (2004-2006), UNEP-WCMC (1993), WWF (2004), Commonwealth of Australia (2007), and Her Royal Majesty and the British Crown and are used under license. The HydroSHEDS v1 database and more information are available at https://www.hydrosheds.org.
• Global climate: NASA LaRC POWER Project, climatology 2001-2025 (POWER v10), CC BY 4.0; quantized, resampled and wet-bulb recomputed by Geothenes.
  • The data was obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center's Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project funded through the NASA Earth Science Division.
  • The data was obtained from the POWER Project's Climatology (Analysis Ready Data Zarr, POWER Version 10.0.0) version on 2026/10/21.
• U.S. station normals: NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, doi:10.25921/4ek7-fk11. U.S. county climate: derived by Geothenes from NOAA NCEI nClimDiv (doi:10.7289/V5M32STR); not official NOAA normals; CDD is a Geothenes estimate.
  • Use liability: NOAA and NCEI cannot provide any warranty as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of furnished data. Users assume responsibility to determine the usability of these data. The user is responsible for the results of any application of this data for other than its intended purpose.
  • Distribution liability: NOAA and NCEI make no warranty, expressed or implied, regarding these data, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty. NOAA and NCEI cannot assume liability for any damages caused by any errors or omissions in these data. If appropriate, NCEI can only certify that the data it distributes are an authentic copy of the records that were accepted for inclusion in the NCEI archives.
• Flood hazard zones: FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL); Sea level rise: NOAA Office for Coastal Management, Sea Level Rise Viewer data. Public domain (U.S. government works). Not a flood determination, and not for insurance, permitting or navigation. Full notices: About the data.
  • FEMA disclaimer: User assumes all risk related to the use of this data. FEMA provides this data "as is" and disclaims any and all warranties, whether express or implied, including (without limitation) any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, and there are no express or implied guarantees of accuracy of the data. In no event will FEMA or any other Federal Agency be liable to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or exemplary damages or lost profit resulting from any use or misuse of this data.
  • Acknowledgment of the NOAA Office for Coastal Management as a data source would be appreciated in products developed from these data, and such acknowledgment as is standard for citation and legal practices for data source is expected.
  • NOAA use constraints: These data illustrate the scale of potential flooding, not the exact location, and do not account for erosion, subsidence, or future construction. Inundation is shown as it would appear during the highest high tides (excludes wind driven tides) with the sea level rise amount. These data should be used only as a screening-level tool for management decisions. As with all remotely sensed data, all features should be verified with a site visit. The dataset is provided "as is," without warranty to its performance, merchantable state, or fitness for any particular purpose. The entire risk associated with the results and performance of this dataset is assumed by the user. This dataset should be used strictly as a planning reference and not for navigation, permitting, or other legal purposes.
• Earthquakes: USGS ANSS Comprehensive Catalog (ComCat; USGS public domain, ANSS partner networks, Global CMT), including ISC-GEM catalogue rows © International Seismological Centre and GEM Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/); GeoNet rows © Earth Sciences New Zealand, CC BY 3.0 NZ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nz/): "We acknowledge the New Zealand GeoNet programme and its sponsors NHC, Earth Sciences NZ, LINZ, NEMA and MBIE for providing data/images used in this study."; NRCan rows: Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. (https://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada); table adapted by Geothenes and shared under CC BY-SA 3.0. Geothenes' version of the earthquake table is free to download under the same license: Downloads.
  • The Catalogue is protected by the Copyright (C) 2025 International Seismological Centre and GEM Foundation. You may use this work under the terms of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (unported)
  • International Seismological Centre (2026), ISC-GEM Earthquake Catalogue, https://doi.org/10.31905/d808b825
• Seismic hazard: USGS National Seismic Hazard Model 2023, revision CONUS.2023.R2 (Altekruse, Powers & Milner 2026, doi:10.5066/P14VGAV4), CC0; acknowledgment: U.S. Geological Survey, National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project. PGA values for site class BC; not building-code design values.
• Map © OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
• Answers by Claude (Anthropic).

Terms

Geothenes is provided as is. Use it lawfully, and don't try to get around its limits, overload the service or share a pass code publicly. Answers are generated automatically and are not professional advice. Passes are sold on the pricing and refund terms above. If these terms change, the version on this page applies to passes bought after the change.

Data published under open licences (ODbL, CC BY-SA, CC BY) stays under those licences; these terms add no restrictions to it.