Methodology

The Climate Cost Index (CCI) is a composite household-level metric that measures climate-linked cost pressure across U.S. counties.

Three-Layer Architecture

The CCI pipeline is organized into three strict layers: Ingest (raw data collection), Transform (county-year harmonization), and Score (statistical engine).

12 Cost Components

CCI integrates 12 climate-linked cost components spanning temperature, severe weather, air quality, natural hazards, energy, health, and disaster recovery.

10-Step Scoring Pipeline

Scores are computed through a deterministic 10-step pipeline: transform inputs, winsorize, percentile rank, center, overlap penalties, acceleration, missingness, composite, scale, and variant outputs.