Standing, citable methodology page defining the protocol behind the agent-mapped census series. Infrastructure, not findings — the document that makes the four category censuses citable as a reproducible system.
AICV published a standing, citable methodology page defining the protocol behind the agent-mapped census series. It's infrastructure, not findings — the document that makes the four category censuses citable as a reproducible system rather than a one-time effort.
Entity definition — how a business enters the corpus. Start from the territory, not the directory. The census maps what exists in the valley, not what appears in any aggregator's index.
The depth pin — one site visit plus one web search per entity. Fixed. Not deeper for larger operators, not shallower for simpler ones. The constraint is what makes results comparable across categories and census runs.
Provenance — stats-script generated, not hand-counted. Every figure in a census report traces back to the inspection data.
Human-review gates — where human judgment enters the pipeline and where it doesn't.
Curation-independence policy — inclusion, ranking, and findings are never for sale. No operator can buy a better result or a position in the corpus.
The methodology page is the contract between AICV and anyone citing its census work. A researcher, a civic leader, a journalist, or an agent pulling a census report can now verify the protocol behind every number. Without it, the four censuses are findings. With it, they're a system.
It's also the document that allows subsequent censuses — healthcare, retail, arts and culture, civic infrastructure — to be understood as part of a series rather than isolated audits.