Once you have created a sketch, you can review a detailed profile with data about your site’s current state, as well as the forecasted costs and effects of your remedies. Sketches are the first step in your project journey, and these forecasts are rough estimates. Taking your sketch through feasibility studies and detailed design will reveal more refined information.
Opening the Profile
While inside your sketch, there are two ways to view your sketch profile:
- Click on your sketch to open the context menu, and click the
Profilebutton
- Click the
Expandbutton on the scorecard at the top left of your screen
The sketch profile includes three tabs:
Site: Information about your site location and contents
Conditions: Information about the current state of the site
Forecasts: Projected effects and costs of your remedies
Reviewing the Site
Inside the Site tab, you will see the following sections:
Land: A breakdown of footprint, land use, land cover, and coordinates of your site
Boundaries: A breakdown of the geographic boundaries overlapping the site
Click on any card or row with an arrow to open the corresponding data layer.
Reviewing Conditions
Inside the Conditions tab, you will see the following sections:
Stressors: Information about the environmental and social stressors affecting the site. These values are derived the average values of any census tracts overlapping the site, weighted according to the percentage overlap with the site.
Stormwater Potentials: The amount of stormwater that could be collected from your roof, site, or offsite diversion. These values are derived from the amount of rainfall falling on the site in an average year and during an 85th-percentile storm, as well as the total area of the roof, site, and offsite runoff contribution area. The offsite runoff contribution area is the total upsteram area funneling to the highest-volume location within a 250-ft radius of the site for stormwater diversion. This section also indicates the rate of infiltration for overlying soils, for sites above a groundwater basin.
Assets: The number of existing assets available in the surrounding area. The area includes the sketch and a 1/3-mile walkshed around the sketch.
Reviewing Forecasts
Inside the Forecasts tab, you will see the following sections:
Effects: The projected benefits of your remedies. Effects use a standardized point system across all metrics. A full bar represents a reasonable total number of points a site of your size could generate, so each site will have a different target based on its footprint.
Costs: The projected costs of your remedies in US dollars. Prices are estimated and rounded based on local market pricing as of 2023. Costs are broken down into Creation (planning, design, and construction) and Annual Care (operations, maintenance, and monitoring). You can set your target budget in the Sketch Details screen, which determines the value of a full bar.
Each remedy is assigned cost values in US dollars, as well as a point value for every effect. The point values are assigned to the below relative t-shirt sizes to give a general heuristic sense of the benefits you are generating without the impression of false accuracy.
Effect Level | Points |
XS | 10 |
S | 40 |
M | 160 |
L | 640 |
XL | 2,560 |
Note that the forecasts are not designed to represent:
- Accurate reflections of the feasibility of projects
- Precise calculations of benefit or cost values
- On-the-ground conditions of a site
- The costs of site preparation, such as utilities relocation or soil remediation
- The needs and values that community members express are of importance to them through gathering stories
Ensure that you evaluate the feasibility of all sketches produced with the Field Kit and perform a more thorough site-specific analysis.