Environmental Grade (v1)

Version 1.0.0 · Published 2026-06-04

What this is

The Environmental Grade is a single letter grade between A+ and F summarizing how concerning the physical environment around an address looks, based on what WiseAddress can observe today. It is the most-prominent number on every report and the one we expect buyers to use as a quick filter.

Architecture pin

Per the 2026-06-02 architecture decision, every WiseAddress report renders one Environmental Grade plus three independent subscores:

• Ongoing Costs ($ / $$ / $$$) — HOA + modeled insurance band, with a per-report verification disclaimer. See Ongoing Costs subscore (v1).
• Schools & Childcare (A-F letter, rendered universally for all profiles) — composite of zoned-public-school ratings and proximity to licensed childcare. Visible to every buyer profile; the recommendation strength is tag-conditional (we surface stronger language for households with children tagged as young-child-under-5 or school-age-child).
• Neighborhood Amenities (high / medium / low): walkable food + parks + day-to-day shopping density. Scope kept small to keep the signal load-bearing.

Why three subscores instead of folding them into one number? Mixed signals (e.g., great schools but a 1.5 mi TRI emitter cluster) should remain readable, and households weight these axes differently. The Environmental Grade is the one signal that has to be summarized for everyone.

How the grade letter is derived

The Environmental Grade is computed by the environmental-feature-inventory Question (plus the Water Quality Question, which emits feature-like outputs into the same aggregation engine). The aggregation rules are deterministic:

1. The worst tier across all features in any category sets the base grade.
   • SEVERE feature anywhere in scope → base D
   • MODERATE feature anywhere → base B
   • MINOR feature anywhere → base A
   • None → A+
2. A count modifier drops the grade by a half-step for each additional different category group that has at least one moderate-or-severe feature. Same-category features do not stack: 3 TRI facilities in range still count as one category. Air-pollution (major_roadways) and noise (traffic_noise) are two harms from the same physical road, so they share one count group: a busy road costs ONE half-step, not two (they still display as two distinct features). This avoids penalizing the same source repeatedly.
3. A dominant override forces the grade to at least D when a high-confidence moderate-or-severe feature sits within 0.1 mi of the address or inside the parcel boundary, regardless of base tier. It fires only on features at or above the confidence gate, and water_quality, flood, radon, and sinkhole are excluded (their distance is structural or their reports are unverified, not point proximity). The override never improves a worse base.
4. Active-only contribution: archived features (e.g., closed industrial sites) can fire MINOR but never contribute to the count modifier.

Data Richness

Each report displays how many of the inventory's 13 categories were actually scanned at compute time. We report this coverage explicitly on every report instead of pretending the grade is comprehensive.

What this is not

• Not a health prediction. WiseAddress measures inventory and proximity; it does not model exposure.
• Not a real-estate appraisal. The grade is independent of price.
• Not a substitute for due diligence. Buyers should always order a Phase I environmental site assessment when the inventory shows concerning signals.

Versioning

This document is pinned at v1. Future revisions get their own URL (our-environmental-grade-v2, etc.) so previously cited reports stay stable. Reports persist the methodology version they were generated against; a v2 publish does not silently rewrite the meaning of an existing report's citation.