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WNC Safer Miles · Pilot

About, terms and privacy

WNC Safer Miles is a community pilot. It is a free, independent map of places to run and walk, scored on what helps women feel safer there. This page explains what the map can and can't tell you, how your information is handled, and exactly how the project was built.

Last updated October 10, 2026.

Not a safety guarantee

A high score means a place has fewer of the risk factors the map measures. It does not mean the place is safe, and a low score does not mean it is dangerous. Conditions change with the season, the weather, the time of day and who else is there. Scores and ratings can be wrong, incomplete or out of date. Use the map as one input alongside your own judgment.

This map is not an emergency service. If you are in danger, call 911.

Who runs this

The project is run by Alison Rose, a runner who lives in Buncombe County. She is a UNC Asheville student working toward clinical neuropsychology, and her work centers on how bodies find safety. She also develops ANCHOR, a tactile grounding tool for nervous system regulation that she is piloting in a clinical setting. ANCHOR helps one person's nervous system settle; this map does related work at the scale of a community. She is not Cherokee: she lives on Cherokee land, draws on the Cherokee practice of gadugi as a guest here, and is learning her own family's Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) lineage, the source of the word orenda used on the map. The project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Asheville, Buncombe County, the City of Hendersonville, Henderson County, Jackson County, the Town of Sylva, any police agency, UNC Asheville, Western Carolina University, or any organization named on the map, including the crisis lines it lists.

When the map says "women," it means all women, trans women included, and nonbinary, gender-expansive and LGBTQ+ people are welcome to rate too. LGBTQ+ people are often harassed out alone simply for being who they are, and their experiences belong on this map. Anyone who has been followed, harassed or made afraid while out alone knows something this map needs.

Decisions are Alison's for now, which is not how the project should stay. A community advisory circle is being formed, including survivors' advocates and women from Latina, Black, Indigenous, disabled, trans and older communities, to review changes to the map, the scores and how the project uses Cherokee and Haudenosaunee concepts.

Terms of use

  • Use at your own risk. The map, scores, ratings and tips are provided as they are, without any promise that they are accurate or complete. To the fullest extent the law allows, Alison Rose and the project are not responsible for any loss, injury or harm connected to using the map or relying on it.
  • Ratings are opinions. Each rating reflects one person's experience of a place. Ratings are not checked and are not statements of fact about any person, business or public agency.
  • Rate places, never people. Don't submit false ratings, and don't use the map to find, follow or harass anyone. The project may remove any rating, without notice, that looks false, abusive or aimed at a person.
  • Group walks. Any group rating walk is voluntary and at your own risk. Walks hosted with a partner organization may follow that organization's own rules and waivers.
  • Changes. This is a pilot. The map, scoring and these terms may change, and the date at the top of this page will show when.

Privacy

What the rating form collects

The place, how safe you felt (1 to 5), the time of day in three bands (daylight, dawn or dusk, after dark), and any of seven checkboxes. At the end there are two optional boxes: one to write anything else you'd like to share, and one to leave an email if you want a reply. It never asks for your name, phone number or an account. If you leave an email, your response is no longer anonymous to Alison Rose, but the email is never posted or shared, and it is used only to reply to you. Please don't write names or anything that could identify someone in the comment box.

What the services record

Tally, the form service, also records when you submitted and a random respondent code, and like most websites it may log technical details such as your IP address under its own privacy policy. The website is hosted on GitHub Pages, which may log visits. The page loads its fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts Google when you open it. The project does not use analytics, ads or tracking cookies.

Where responses go

Responses are stored in Tally and in two private Google Sheets, one per language, that only Alison Rose can open. Once a day, an automated process reads the responses, removes everything except the place, the rating, the time band and the checkboxes, and publishes those totals to the map. Submission times, respondent codes, comments and email addresses are never published. The process only tells Alison Rose, in private, that a comment or reply request is waiting; it never copies what anyone wrote.

The same daily process also looks for unusual patterns that can signal spam or false ratings, such as one respondent code rating the same place more than once or a sudden burst of ratings for one place. It only flags them for Alison Rose to review in private; it never removes a rating on its own, and the respondent codes it uses are never published.

Coursework and research

Alison Rose may describe what the pilot shows in coursework, presentations or research, using anonymous totals only, never individual responses. Any formal research use would go through the appropriate university ethics review first.

How long responses are kept

Responses are kept for the length of the pilot and for one year after it ends, then deleted from Tally and from the sheets. Rows that are spam or that name or describe a person are deleted as soon as they are found. The published totals on the map contain no individual responses.

Removal and questions

Unless you left an email, the project doesn't know who you are, so it can't look up your rating by name. If you submitted something you want removed, or you have any question about this page, email connect.alisonrose@gmail.com with the place and roughly when you rated it.

Suggesting a place

Anyone can suggest a public park, greenway or trail in Western North Carolina through a short form (English or Spanish). It asks for the county, the place's name, a nearby road or landmark, the type of place and a few optional observations, plus an optional comment box and an optional email if you'd like a reply. It never asks for your name, and an email you leave is never posted or shared. Please name places, not people.

Suggestions go to a private sheet and are never published automatically. Alison Rose reviews each one, Claude researches the place the same way as the others (official pages, recent news and Helene status), and only then is it added, scored on the same six factors. Private land, places outside the three counties and anything that names or describes a person are not added. A place you love for being quiet will be public once it's on the map, and may be marked "Go prepared."

Using this site safely

If someone checks your phone, computer or browser, these steps can help keep your visit private.

  • Quick exit. The button at the bottom of every page replaces this site with a weather site, so pressing Back does not return here.
  • Private browsing. A private or incognito window does not save this visit to your history.
  • History. If you used a regular window, your browser history may show this site. Clear it only if doing so is safe for you; a suddenly empty history can draw attention too.
  • A safer device. A library, work or friend's computer may be safer than a shared one at home.

The rating form never asks for your name, and the map never shows who rated. Advocates at Our VOICE (828-255-7576), Helpmate (828-254-0516), Safelight (828-693-3840) the Center for Domestic Peace in Jackson County (828-586-1237), REACH of Haywood County (828-456-7898), SAFE of Transylvania County (828-885-7233) and My Sister's Place in Madison County (888-765-3441) can help you plan for safety, including technology safety, any time of day.

How this was built

In the interest of full transparency, here is exactly how the project was made.

  • Concept and direction: Alison Rose. The idea, the priorities, the decision to rate places and never people, to leave police and crime data off the map (except dated alerts about serious violent incidents, confirmed by an official notice or reliable news, which never change a score), to show low ratings as warnings, to add Spanish and to frame this as a pilot all came from her. She reviewed, tested and decided what to keep at each step.
  • Built with AI. The site was built with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, using Claude Code, working under Alison's direction in October 2026. Claude wrote the website code, drafted the page text, safety tips and Spanish translation, created the rating forms, set up the daily update, and researched the crisis lines and partner organizations.
  • How the starting scores were made. Claude first drafted the six factor scores for each place from general knowledge, with no sources and no site visits. On October 9, 2026, those were replaced with a structured evidence review: Claude gathered public evidence for each place (city and county pages, the NC Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, and the land trust Conserving Carolina; 2025 and 2026 local news; and Google Maps listings, meaning posted hours, review counts and recurring review themes), scored each factor 1 to 5 against a written rubric, and recorded a confidence level for each. That review found that some places were closed or damaged by Hurricane Helene; those are shown on the map but not scored until they reopen. Cell signal could not be checked from public sources and is estimated from each place's setting. Hiking apps such as AllTrails could not be read automatically and were not used. These are still estimates. They are being corrected through women's ratings and planned visits to each place at midday and at dusk, ideally alongside women from local running groups.
  • The Spanish version is an AI draft waiting for review by native speakers in the community.
  • Crisis-line numbers were checked against two public sources each on October 9, 2026.
  • The map is drawn in code. The county outlines and place locations are approximate. No Google Maps data is used on the map itself; the "Directions" link opens Google Maps.
  • Growth and safety checks. The pilot began with 18 places in Buncombe County on October 9, 2026, and by October 11 covered 90 parks, greenways and trails with a walking path in Buncombe, Henderson, Jackson, Haywood, Transylvania and Madison counties, each researched from official sources. Before any place goes on the map, it is checked for a serious violent incident in the past year. Each change is tested in both languages at phone and desktop widths, and an independent reviewer that had not seen the build audited the newest places against their sources.
  • The research on the map. The statistics in "What women already know" come from Gallup (2023) and a 2023 survey by adidas with White Ribbon. "The research behind it" draws on women's safety audits, first developed by METRAC in Toronto in 1989, and Fisher and Nasar's 1992 study of prospect, refuge and escape. "Better, together" cites research on collective efficacy (Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, 1997), group exercise and stress (Yorks and colleagues, 2017) and time in nature (White and colleagues, 2019). Each statistic links to its source.
  • The tools: GitHub Pages hosts the site, and its code is public at github.com/connectalisonrose-lab/wnc-safer-miles. Tally runs the English and Spanish forms. Responses go to Google Sheets. A scheduled AI task, also run by Claude, does the once-a-day update described under Privacy.
  • The scoring method is explained on the map under "How the score works," and in Alison's written rationale for the project, which draws on research in feminist geography, environmental design and participatory mapping.

© 2026 Alison Rose. Concept, content and design direction belong to Alison Rose, who holds full creative control and rights to adapt, rename, extend or publish this work.