Environmental Scoring
An environmental aspect is scored on three criteria, resolved to a number and then to a band. The band — together with one shortcut through legal status — is what decides whether the aspect is significant.
The three criteria
| Criterion | Token | Asks |
|---|---|---|
| Severity | [S] | How bad is the environmental effect? |
| Probability | [O] | How often does it occur? |
| Legal status | [Y] | How tightly is it regulated? |
Each is a definition list whose entries carry a numeric value — the weight the formula reads.
Severity — the shipped scale
| Value | Level | Means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Very low | No effect worth recording |
| 2 | Low | Local and short lived |
| 3 | Medium | Inside the site, cleared by intervention |
| 4 | High | Reaches beyond the site, long lived |
| 5 | Very high | Irreversible, spread over a wide area |
Probability — the shipped scale
| Value | Level | Means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Very low | Less than once in three years |
| 2 | Low | Once a year |
| 3 | Medium | Once a month |
| 4 | High | Once a week |
| 5 | Very high | Continuous, or every shift |
Legal status — the shipped scale
| Value | Level | Makes significant |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | No legal requirement | — |
| 2 | General obligation, no numeric limit | — |
| 3 | Corporate commitment or customer requirement | — |
| 4 | Regulated, measurement or declaration required | Yes |
| 5 | Numeric legal limit, exceedance is sanctioned | Yes |
Legal status is the criterion that makes this module's scoring distinctive: regulatory exposure is scored alongside severity and probability rather than noted beside them.
Score and band
Two formulas do two jobs. The shipped pair is multiplicative:
[S]*[O]*[Y]
IF([CS]>64 : 4 : IF([CS]>27 : 3 : IF([CS]>8 : 2 : 1)))
That gives a 1–125 range banded at 8, 27 and 64. An additive pair ships inactive: [S]+[O]+[Y] with
bands at 6, 9 and 12 — a 3–15 range.
A band expression may name the three criteria as well as [CS], since forcing the top band from severity
alone is a common requirement. A score expression may not name [CS] — it is what it produces, and the
system refuses to save such an expression.
Range compatibility is not checked. Activate the additive score while leaving the multiplicative bands in place and nothing will ever be significant — the highest additive score is 15, and the bands do not reach significance until 28. There is no error; the symptom is a register in which nothing is ever significant, which reads like good news.
If you switch one formula, switch both. The formula screen carries this warning above the expression field.
See Environmental Formulas for the editor.
The bands
| Band number | Name | Colour | Covers | Significant | Requires measure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Low | green | Score of 8 or below | — | — |
| 2 | Medium | yellow | 9 to 27 | — | — |
| 3 | High | orange | 28 to 64 | Yes | Yes |
| 4 | Critical | red | Above 64 | Yes | Yes |
Two flags on a band definition drive behaviour rather than just reporting:
- Significant — landing in this band marks the aspect significant.
- Requires measure — landing in this band demands that a measure be opened before the record can proceed.
Significance has two routes
An aspect is significant if either holds:
- Its band is marked significant, or
- Its legal status level is marked makes significant.
The second route reaches significance without going through the band at all. A numeric legal limit whose breach carries a sanction is significant whether or not the probability is low — and a low-probability, low-severity aspect under a hard legal limit would otherwise band as Low and disappear from the register's most important list.
Significance is stored on the record when it is scored, not re-derived when the record is read. Editing a band definition or a legal status level afterwards cannot move what a closed record was approved on — which is also why the significant-aspects report reads the stored flag rather than recalculating.
Scores are stored, not recomputed
The score, the band and the significance flag are all calculated on the server when the record is saved and written onto the record.
Rewriting a formula next year therefore leaves the records already made where they are. The trade-off is that a scale change does not propagate: applying it to existing records means opening a revision per record.
When scoring happens
Scoring is entered at the control step, after the record has been approved — not while it is a draft. The draft establishes what the aspect is; the control step establishes how bad it is and what will be done.
A positive aspect is not scored at all: the fields are cleared and hidden, and the flow skips the control step entirely.