Data & Methodology

EntitleSignal is built around a source-first principle: structured fields should be traceable back to an official public record, and uncertainty should remain visible rather than being filled with guesses.

Source hierarchy

We prioritize official municipal APIs, GIS services, agenda systems, staff reports, meeting packets and development portals. When a primary system is unavailable from our production host, we may use another official municipal publication as secondary coverage and label the stage and limitation rather than pretending it is equivalent.

Normalization

Public records are converted into consistent fields such as case number, project name, development request, location, acreage, zoning, units, square footage, applicant, owner, hearing date, recommendation and source links. A field remains blank when the source does not support it with sufficient confidence.

Change detection

Collectors are diff-aware. Re-reading an unchanged public record should not create a new signal. A signal is created when a case first appears or when a tracked field materially changes. Raw source payloads or source text are retained where practical for auditability.

Reading case stages and dates

A staff recommendation is not a board vote, and a board vote is not necessarily final zoning adoption or a permit. A listed meeting date, including one in the past, does not establish that an action occurred. When official minutes or later decisions have not been independently verified, treat the outcome as unverified and consult the linked primary source before relying on it.

Collection time is different from case filing time. Rechecking an old record does not make it a new application or new opportunity. Some official source links open a machine-readable municipal record rather than a public-facing case detail page; the case number should be checked against that record.

Mapping

Geocoding is intentionally conservative. Automated map placement currently requires a high-confidence match and the returned city must match the source jurisdiction. Descriptive offsets such as “500 feet north of the corner” may remain unmapped rather than being converted into an invented point.

Priority scoring

The Priority Feed uses transparent rules based on characteristics such as entitlement type, project scale, residential units, hearing timing and verified enrichment. The score helps users sort attention. It is not a probability of approval, a valuation model or an investment recommendation.

Project timelines

Separate municipal cases can represent different stages of one development. EntitleSignal links cases into project entities conservatively. The current automatic linker uses exact normalized project-name matches inside the same jurisdiction. Fuzzy automatic merging is intentionally disabled because a false merge is more damaging than leaving two records separate.

Coverage

The private beta currently focuses on Phoenix Metro. Coverage depth differs by jurisdiction because municipal publishing systems differ. The authenticated workspace exposes source status and direct source links so users can distinguish early-filed records from later hearing-stage coverage.

Corrections

If an official source conflicts with itself or produces an impossible chronology, EntitleSignal favors preserving the source evidence while suppressing an unreliable structured value. Beta users can raise suspected data-quality issues through the administrator who provided their invitation.