Methodology
Civic Worth resolves one Columbus address to its parcel and joins the public records that govern it. This page documents every source we draw from, how often each refreshes, how we hold AI-written summaries to those sources, and how to tell us we're wrong. Nothing here is proprietary — it's all public record, cited.
Coverage
Civic Worth currently covers Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio. Connectors for other Ohio jurisdictions (Cleveland / Cuyahoga County) are built and tested but are not served today — we hold a city to the full data bar before turning it on. Every report and card stamps an as of date that reflects the actual vintage of the data behind it, not the day you opened it.
The neighborhood maps (/columbus/maps) cover the Franklin County portion of Columbus. The city extends a little past the county line — chiefly the Polaris / Far North area in Delaware County, plus a small sliver in Fairfield County (together roughly 3% of the city's land). Those out-of-county areas aren't shown yet: the parcel maps read Franklin County Auditor records, and the neighborhood boundaries stop at the county line. Because the boundaries end cleanly there, no neighborhood is partially counted — the excluded area simply isn't drawn.
Sources & refresh cadence
Each connector declares a target refresh cadence (below). Ingestion runs on a scheduled and operator-triggered basis; where a source publishes less often than its cadence (the ACS is annual, district boundaries change every cycle), the cadence is the polling target, not a promise the underlying figure changed.
Columbus
| Source | What it provides | Refresh target | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin County Auditor (Office of Michael Stinziano) | Parcel boundaries, ownership of record, valuation, mailing address | Daily | Public records |
| City of Columbus — Building & Zoning Services | Current zoning + Zone In (new code) districts | Daily | Public records |
| City of Columbus — 311 Customer Service Center | Service requests + code-enforcement complaints | Daily | Public records |
| City of Columbus — Building & Zoning Services (Accela) | Building permits | Daily | Public records |
| City of Columbus — Title 33 (codified via Municode) | Zoning-code ordinance text | Weekly | Public records |
| City of Columbus — Department of Development | Area commission boundaries | Daily | CC0 |
| City of Columbus — Department of Technology | City council district boundaries | Annually | CC0 |
| Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) | Transit stops, routes & schedules (GTFS) | Weekly | COTA public data |
| City of Columbus — Public Places (libraries) | Public library branch locations | Weekly | CC0 |
| City of Columbus — Recreation & Parks | Recreation center locations | Weekly | CC0 |
| City of Columbus 311 (vacant-structure complaints) | Commercial-vacancy proxy for Storefront Scout (beta) | Daily | Public records |
Ohio statewide
| Source | What it provides | Refresh target | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio Secretary of State | Election dates & contests | Weekly | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| Franklin County Board of Elections | Voting precincts + polling places | Daily | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| Ohio Secretary of State — Business Services | Business entity filings + registered agents | Monthly | Public records |
| Ohio Department of Education | School-district report cards (ratings, performance index, graduation) | Annually | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| OpenStates / Plural Policy | State Senate & House legislators | Weekly | CC BY 4.0 |
Federal
| Source | What it provides | Refresh target | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey (5-year) | Tract & block-group demographics, income, rent, tenure (neighborhood-change widget) | Monthly | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| U.S. Census Bureau — TIGER/Line 2024 | Congressional + Ohio state legislative district boundaries | Daily | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| NCES EDGE | School-district boundaries | Quarterly | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development — HUD UserNot yet live | Fair-market rent + subsidized-housing context | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| U.S. EPA — EnvirofactsNot yet live | TRI, Superfund, brownfield & regulated facilities | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| Public Environmental Data Partners — EJScreen v2.3 mirror | Environmental-justice screening indicators | Daily | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| FEMA — National Flood Hazard LayerNot yet live | 100-year + 500-year flood zones | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| FEMA — National Risk Index v1.20Not yet live | 18-category natural-hazard risk | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| NOAA — Weather Prediction Center HeatRiskNot yet live | Heat-risk forecast | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| FCC — Broadband Data CollectionNot yet live | Broadband availability by technology | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| BLS QCEW — illustrative sampleNot yet live | Storefront Scout employment & wages — illustrative county sample modeled on BLS QCEW NAICS-3, not yet a live federal pull | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| CDC — PLACESNot yet live | Tract-level health measures | — | Public domain (U.S. Gov) |
| First Street™ — Risk FactorNot yet live | Climate risk (flood, fire, heat, wind, air) — paid add-on, contract-gated | — | Licensed (contract) |
Sources tagged Not yet liveare connectors we've built and test but haven't yet wired to live data — no report shows a figure from them, and the relevant parcel surface says so plainly rather than showing a placeholder number. The First Street™ climate add-on is additionally a licensed source served only under contract; the neighborhood-change widget's ACS figures require a configured Census API key.
How we hold AI summaries to the record
Some sections are written by a language model (Anthropic's Claude). We never ship an AI-written sentence without a provenance check. Every section's narrative is validated against its typed inputs: every number in the prose must trace to a citation — source name, connector, an as oftimestamp, and the field it came from — and any cited value must appear verbatim in the text. A number that can't be traced fails the build; the section is regenerated or dropped rather than shipped.
Defamation-sensitive sections (code enforcement, ownership) run through an additional non-conclusory-language check: we report observed facts (“associated with”, “consistent with”) and never assert a legal conclusion the record doesn't support.
Owner names & privacy
- Embeds never show an owner-of-record name. The embeddable widgets render civic facts (district, zoning, permits) and tract-level aggregates only — no owner field is fetched or displayed.
- Free previews redact owner names.The owner-of-record name is withheld from the free tier and shown only in paid reports, where it is sourced from the County Auditor's public record.
- Aggregate data carries no PII. The neighborhood-change figures are U.S. Census tract aggregates — they describe an area, never a person.
- You can ask us to access, correct, or delete personal data, or opt out of any sale, via our privacy-request form and do-not-sell page. See the full privacy policy.
Corrections
Public records have errors, and we make mistakes joining them. If something looks wrong for a parcel, tell us — submitting a correction flags the parcel as disputed while we review it, so the next reader sees the dispute immediately.
We correct the join and the cache; we don't alter the underlying public record (we point you to the authoritative source for that). Newsrooms: see the verified-newsroom tier for free reports and embeddable widgets.