Sources, coverage and data lifecycle

U4 source catalog

The source families below come from the released definitions fixture, not a live query to the publishers. Publication dates and observation periods differ. Lookout serves an accepted, pinned runtime; it does not silently replace it whenever an upstream site changes.

Geography and coverage

U4 maps 314 tracts across these five counties. The values use 2020 tract definitions displayed on 2024 tract boundaries; FEMA’s source geography uses its 2021 boundary files. Two ACS-only water tracts are listed as not mapped. Do not join by row position across different geography releases.

National county context has a different coverage surface. The overlap UI is Washington-only in U4; that restriction does not expand M1 coverage beyond its five counties.

Units, estimates and comparisons

• PLACES reports model-based adult prevalence with 95% intervals. Read each measure’s universe; some apply only to particular ages or groups. Crude prevalence is not interchangeable with age-adjusted county prevalence.
• ACS values are five-year survey estimates. Derived shares and margins are calculated by Lookout from Census tables. They are not a single-year census count.
• FEMA NRI scores are national relative ranks, and rating classes are the publisher’s classes. Expected annual loss uses modeled annual dollars; neither is a forecast of an event at a particular property.
• County values come from publisher county rows, not the sum of tract values. Community resilience is county-only, ranked among U.S. counties.
• Thurston values marked registry-authoritative stay on the existing admitted record. In the M1 county matrix, reason RA points to that authoritative path rather than supplying a duplicate value.

Missing values and reliability

Always read the reason code with the value. A null can mean publisher missingness, source withdrawal, an unsupported universe or a separately authoritative county record. It is not automatically zero. The dictionary lists every published reason, rating, reliability and annotation code.

annotation codes

rating codes

reason codes

reliability codes

Facilities and record context

Seven layers are available in the U4 facility catalog: schools, hospitals, bridges, HIFLD hospitals, fire/EMS stations, ambulance services and police stations. The four new D8 layers carry incomplete-inventory disclosures and record-specific access/status notes.

CMS hospital listings are linked to HIFLD facilities and have no independently verified map point in this runtime. Use linked facility identifiers rather than counting a listing and its mapped campus as two facilities. A linked listing can refer to more than one campus.

An owner may see additional bridge fields; member projections omit them. Facility location does not prove operational status, capacity, public access, road access or emergency readiness. Consult the source record and local authority for operational decisions.

NOAA storm records, HRSA shortage designations and Washington DOH detail records retain their own periods, limitations and access rules. A shortage designation is not a count of available appointments; a storm point is not a complete hazard footprint.

Refresh and versioning

1. Identify a new publisher release and compare schema, geography, field meaning, availability and source terms with the accepted release.
2. Run the reviewed data ingestion and acceptance workflow in the data repository. Retain attribution, source periods, permission decisions and field allow-lists; compare missingness and geography joins.
3. Build a new immutable data package with its manifest, hashes and acceptance receipts. Do not edit the deployed package to make a new release look like the old one.
4. Run provider/contract and UI checks, review visible changes, and deploy through a new approved release. Record changed source vintages and any comparison implications in the changelog.
5. Retain prior pins needed for artifact traceability and rollback. Do not claim continuous, nightly or real-time refresh: no such schedule is established for the pinned U4 runtime.

Withdrawal, retention and reuse

A source withdrawal or measure revocation can make previously visible data unavailable. The tract provider re-reads configuration through the directory mount; reviewed tools record a receipt chain before replacing configuration. Linked tenure/cost-burden measures are withheld together because their values can reconstruct one another.

Revoking M1 does not revoke related U3a county evidence. The operator must assess those rights separately. Do not restore old configuration merely to make a chart render.

Explore-and-cite is subject to source terms and does not itself enable annex export. Neighbor values are explore-only. Do not use a share link or browser capture to circumvent a source restriction.

The application’s artifact holds and retention controls do not establish an organization’s retention policy by themselves. Follow the approved retention decision for exports, raw data, backups and support records; do not invent a duration from this documentation.

Clinic practice locations

The clinic release uses the HRSA site download (https://data.hrsa.gov/topics/health-centers/), the CMS NPPES Version 2 dissemination files (https://download.cms.gov/nppes/NPI_Files.html), current CMS organization responses (https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api-page), and the Census Geocoder (https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/Geocoding_Services_API.html). The September 2026 baseline is updated through the September 14–20 weekly file. Only active Type 2 organizations reporting a 261Q Clinic/Center taxonomy are selected; primary and secondary Washington practice locations are considered. Mailing addresses and individual practitioners are excluded.

Geocoding uses the publicly reported street, city, state and ZIP. Admission requires matching normalized street and ZIP, a Census county assignment, and containment in the retained county boundary. Nonmatches, conflicting results and ambiguous matches are excluded without inferring county from city or ZIP. Census coordinates interpolate address ranges. HRSA permanent-site coordinates must fall inside their reported county; mobile or suppressed-address sites remain list-only.

Specialty labels are retained from individual public CMS provider responses, not a bundled NUCC codebook. They are provider-reported classifications, not independently verified services. Distinct provider/practice identifiers remain separate even when names and addresses coincide. Published CMS aliases are searchable. Nine reviewed provider-directory locations supplement missing sites or labels; their specialties remain separate from CMS taxonomy descriptions. Counts describe registry practice records, not buildings.

The accuracy release contains 1,221 source records, 1,219 mapped points and two list-only sites: Grays Harbor 62, Lewis 86, Mason 51, Pierce 721 and Thurston 301. The increase mainly reflects identities previously combined by name/address, plus directory additions; it does not mean newly opened clinics. DaVita Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater and four Indigo locations are searchable. Six explicitly described urgent-care directory sites supplement the registry classification. These totals do not establish complete coverage.

Enable Clinics and specialty clinics (OpenStreetMap) alongside the CMS/HRSA layer to compare them. Registry markers are pink; OSM markers are blue. Each source has independent name/address and specialty filters. The comparison table counts records and mapped points in the current county scope and filters; the Cross-source matching panel suggests links and shows name/address/distance evidence, ambiguity and missing or differing specialties. Suggested links do not merge records or confirm identity. OSM counts refer to mapped objects, so a node and an area may describe the same clinic.

The earlier regional OSM snapshot contained 627 objects across five counties: Grays Harbor 38, Lewis 38, Mason 20, Pierce 452 and Thurston 79. That snapshot had a July 24, 2026 source timestamp and was downloaded September 27, 2026. The separate Lewis and Pierce workspaces were accepted September 28 with 39 and 459 OSM objects respectively from September 28 snapshots; do not use the older regional totals as current counts for those workspaces. Opening this layer never waits for an Overpass query. The browser reuses county records for toggles and filters during the current authenticated explorer session. Reloading the page fetches the local snapshot again. A weekly validated refresh attempts to update the snapshot. Incomplete, stale or regressing acquisitions retain the previous accepted layer and its source date, with an operational warning.

OSM includes community-tagged clinics, doctors, dentists, dialysis and selected outpatient specialties. A name containing Urgent Care does not imply that OSM supplies an urgent-care specialty tag. Use name search and Specialty not supplied to investigate missing tags. Details preserve OSM object links, brand/operator aliases and source tags. Locations, opening hours, services and completeness are not independently verified.

OSM-derived records are separately downloadable from the layer controls for the current county scope and filters as GeoJSON Lines, with attribution to OpenStreetMap contributors and ODbL 1.0 licensing. Source and license information: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright. Neither clinic layer contributes to annex exports. The broader OSM Places overlay is separate and still uses its existing viewport query cache.