How we build our county pages

Every county page on this site is built from one dataset of 195 measurements covering all 3,143 US counties, assembled 2026-08-30. This page explains recorded source publishers and releases, how we compare counties, and how editorial review works.

How a comparison is counted

A comparison counts only the counties that carry the same measurement, which is fewer than all 3,143 for some of them. A county reads as higher than another only where its underlying value is greater. Counties that share a value are reported as ties, not ranked, and percentages are rounded down.

Rounding down matters where a value is common. 2,765 counties share the same coastal-flooding rating, so a rank at the bottom of that group is a tie, and we say so instead of reporting it as a position.

Where the numbers come from

We record a source for a measurement under one of three standards, and each source below is labelled with the ones it was recorded under.

exact value match

Published values matched ours across the county population.

structural match

The publisher is proven by the measurement definition; the release date is not established.

recorded attribution

Carried over from the measurement list; not independently verified.

Measurements that cannot be ranked

Some measurements are shared too widely across counties to place one against the rest honestly. Water quality is reported on a four-point scale; overall disaster risk as a word. There is no percentile to draw, so no distribution chart is shown, and the value is carried in a pill instead.

Editorial review

Published county commentary is reviewed and signed by WMIL Editorial Staff, which accepts responsibility for the page's editorial presentation.

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