Scoring & Model

What is the CalEnviroScreen Model?

• The model is based on geography, specifically census tracts in California.
• It presents information for the entire state.
• The model is made up of 4 components – 2 Pollution Burden components and 2 Population Characteristics components.
• Each component is made up of a set of indicators.
• There are 13 Pollution Burden indicators and 8 Population Characteristics indicators.

How is CalEnviroScreen scored?

• Each census tract receives scores for as many of the 21 indicators as possible. Some census tracts will not have scores for every one of the indicators.
• For each indicator, the scores are put in order from highest to lowest. This allows us to calculate a percentile for all areas that have a score.
• An average of the indicators that make up a component (Exposures, Environmental Effects, Sensitive Populations, Socioeconomic Factors) is first calculated.
• The Population Characteristics score for a census tract is the average Sensitive Populations and Socioeconomic Factors component for that census tract.
• The Pollution Burden score is the average of Environmental Effects and Exposures components, where the Environmental Effects component is weighted one-half because we consider Environmental Effects to make a smaller contribution to Pollution Burden than Exposures do.

• To get the CalEnviroScreen score we multiply the Pollution Burden score by the Population Characteristics score.

You can view the statewide CalEnviroScreen 4.0 results by census tract on our online map.