The Lookout guide

What Lookout does

Lookout is a place-based planning and evidence application. It brings county and census-tract measures, maps, records and source context into one workflow so you can explore a question, compare places and build an eligible cited annex.

Start with a county and a planning goal. Lookout loads the evidence available for that place and your project access. You can explore one measure at a time, inspect tract profiles and facility records, and compare surrounding counties. The Build annex step uses the evidence admitted to the pilot export workflow.

U3b extends the U4 exploration tools with cited Thurston annex captures, optional overlap and storm-history sections, and explicit owner-author review labels. The installed source permissions and project access determine which controls are available.

Your first exploration

Every signed-in Lookout page has the same header and task menu. The header shows the Place (county) and Workspace you are working in; changing either updates every link. Open Menu to reach any task, grouped as Explore, Plan, Review and Operate: for example Plan › Saved projects returns to your project workspace, and Plan › Needs and site analysis carries the county, measure and selected tract from the map. Links keep your place, workspace and organization, so you do not need to choose them again. Help opens the documentation. After a release, reload old Lookout tabs to use the current interface.

1. Place and goal: choose a county and the question you want to explore. Use your authorized project for the full pilot evidence. Thurston County is the current full pilot.
2. Explore evidence: select a measure and read its source, date, unit and limitations. A measure marked Map can shade the geography; some measures provide county values or records instead.
3. Inspect a tract or record: select a tract to open its profile, or a facility or storm record to examine the available details. Read missing-value and coverage notes before comparing locations.
4. Compare places: use This county, Surrounding counties or Statewide where available. Check that the geography, period and definition are comparable.
5. Build annex: add eligible evidence, review the outline and cited draft, and use the supported export workflow. If Add to annex is disabled, read the reason rather than treating the value as exportable.

Lewis and Pierce personal workspaces

Lewis and Pierce are live Soldier Data workspaces owned by James in the existing account organization. Sign in with your existing account and open the county workspace below. County-sponsored workspaces and designated county reviewers are deferred until a county expresses interest.

Each workspace provides clinic and OSM mapping, cross-source comparison candidates, facility review and physical-site assignments, 58 tract measures plus county community resilience, and a separately authorized HTML evidence annex. In Build, select up to five admitted measures and download the evidence annex. Individual tracts includes the whole county and holds up to 500 values: the tract count multiplied by the selected measures. Counties with up to 100 tracts keep five measures; Clark (115) allows four, Spokane (130) three, Snohomish (173) and Pierce (193) two, and King (495) one. Build states the allowed number and disables extra choices. County totals still allows five measures. Individual tracts is unavailable above 500 tracts. An annex with the overlap comparison stays limited to counties of up to 100 tracts. This is planning evidence, not a completed hazard mitigation plan or the Thurston PDF/Word/CSV workflow.

At the September 28, 2026 UTC acceptance, Lewis had 86 registry observations, all mapped, and 39 OSM objects. Pierce had 721 registry observations, 720 mapped, and 459 OSM objects. These are source records, not verified unique operating clinics; unknown specialties and unresolved matches remain visible.

The weekly county plans refresh source packages and synchronize authorized review history. Quality failures retain the accepted release. OSM loads from the local accepted snapshot; the final acceptance refresh retained valid September 28 snapshots after complete live acquisition failed, preserving their original dates. A refresh does not renew human verification.

Coverage and access

Organization membership alone does not grant access to pilot project evidence. If expected data is unavailable, confirm that you are signed in with the correct account and project membership.

Some bridge details are owner-only. Members receive the permitted projection without the owner-only fields. Different accounts can therefore see different details for the same bridge.

Read measures with their context

U4 includes health measures from CDC PLACES, housing and transportation measures from the American Community Survey, and FEMA National Risk Index measures. Each measure carries its own unit, period, source context and availability. Values from different publishers are not automatically comparable.

Use the tract profile to inspect the available measures for a selected census tract. A tract describes an area and its population; it does not describe an individual household or person. County-only community resilience must not be interpreted as a value measured separately for each tract.

• Read the unit: a percentage, a dollar estimate, a count and a percentile or rating mean different things.
• Read the geography and period before comparing values. A release date is not necessarily the observation year.
• Not Applicable and No Rating are publisher statuses, not numeric zero. Unavailable or withheld values must not be filled in with zero.
• Review published ranges, margins of error and reliability notes where provided. Lack of a published range does not mean the estimate is certain.
• Keep source attribution and limitations with any permitted citation. Lookout calculations and publisher measures are labeled separately.

Explore where measures overlap

The overlap view counts how many selected measures meet their configured criteria in each assessable tract. Each measure has equal weight. It is a screening tool for exploration, not a probability, a validated combined risk score or a prediction.

Choose up to five measures, review the direction of concern for each, and choose the available threshold settings. Numeric measures use the selected comparison method; FEMA rating measures use a rating-class floor. The default numeric selection is the top 20%, and the default FEMA floor is Relatively Moderate. Read the method panel for the exact reference set and rules in your view.

1. Open the overlap view for a supported Washington county.
2. Select measures and review their directions. Where prompted, choose whether higher or lower values indicate more concern.
3. Read the legend, exclusions, missing-data notices and method panel before interpreting the count. Zero qualifying measures and not assessable are different outcomes.
4. Inspect the underlying tract evidence. Use the view's copy-link control to share the configuration; recipients still need access to its evidence.

Use facility and record layers

U4 adds HIFLD hospitals, fire and EMS stations, ambulance services, and police stations alongside the existing school, hospital and bridge layers. Open a record to read its source, location details, access and status notes, and coverage gaps.

Hospital listings and mapped facilities are not interchangeable. CMS listings linked to HIFLD facilities do not gain a separately verified map point. Capital Medical Center is represented at its HIFLD location. Do not infer a second facility solely from a linked listing.

Existing storm-event records, HRSA shortage designations, Washington Department of Health details and county evidence remain available according to project access. Effective FEMA flood zones provide map context; seeing a facility near or inside a zone is not a completed engineering assessment.

Build and download an annex

On Build annex, select up to five additional Thurston measures when the annex configuration is enabled. Optionally include the same-county overlap and the admitted storm-history section. The draft freezes the selected observations, source receipts, directions and limitations. Existing U3a evidence remains separately admitted.

U3b checks source and download permissions again when queuing, rendering, publishing and downloading PDF, Word and CSV exports. An owner reviewing their own draft is labeled as author self-approval, not independent review. Changing the draft invalidates the previous review.

1. In the authorized Thurston pilot, add eligible evidence from Explore evidence and review the Build annex outline.
2. Prepare the cited draft and follow the review and snapshot controls available to your account. Permissions and evidence eligibility still apply.
3. Choose PDF, Word or Data (CSV) when the export is ready. If the browser does not start the download automatically, use the visible Download link.
4. Review the exported citations, source periods and limitations before sharing the document.

Three ways to use Lookout

When something looks wrong

For a persistent issue, send your project administrator the county, measure or layer, steps to reproduce, approximate time and any displayed request ID. Do not include passwords, session cookies or confidential exports.

Terms you will see

Clinics and specialty clinics

In the Thurston pilot, open Map features → Clinics (registries and provider directories). The map and records list use the same Search registry clinics and Registry/directory-reported specialty filters. Search by name or address, then press Enter or leave the field. Select All clinics to clear the specialty filter. County and surrounding-county views control the geographic scope.

Open a clinic's details to see its public practice address, reported specialties, source identifiers, and location method. HRSA sites without a published specialty remain visible under All clinics. Mobile sites are listed without a fixed map point. Points derived from Census address ranges are approximate and may not identify a building entrance.

This layer combines HRSA-supported sites with active CMS organization records reporting a Clinic/Center taxonomy. It is not a complete inventory of healthcare practices, and it does not establish licensure, opening hours, available services, or patient access. Organizations sharing an address can remain separate records. Confirm care arrangements directly with the clinic. Clinic records are for exploration and are not admitted to annex exports.

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.