Editorial and evidence standard

Evidence first. Keep the record precise.

DataCenterData exists because debates about AI infrastructure routinely compare incompatible numbers. Our job is to preserve the distinctions that change the answer.

Last changed 19 September 2026

Claim verdicts

JSON, methodology and every badge use the same eight strings. Green is reserved for Supported.

A verdict applies only to the wording shown.

Company claims are shown as stated; they are not findings.

Supported

Independent evidence supports the claim as stated, for the stated period.

A government, regulatory, court, parcel, audited or measured record says this. It is not permanent and does not support every related claim.

Partially supported

Independent evidence supports part of the claim; the rest is unknown or unsupported.

A narrower statement is true. The full statement is not thereby false.

Company claim

The only support is the claimant or its agents. Shown as stated, not adopted.

We know the company said it. That is not a finding that it is true or false.

Contradicted

Reliable evidence conflicts with the claim as stated.

The wording is wrong on unit, relationship, status or fact. It does not prove bad faith.

Outdated

The claim referred to a date, trigger or plan that has since passed or lapsed, and no newer evidence has been checked.

Printed with an as-of date. It does not mean the claim is now false.

Not independently verified

A non-company party said it and we have not checked it against a primary record.

Different from a company claim. Not a finding that it is false.

Unknown

We looked; the reviewed sources do not establish it.

Not zero, not absent, not noncompliant.

Not yet due

A commitment or projection whose trigger or deadline has not arrived.

It cannot be graded yet and is not a failure.

Source hierarchy

  1. Controlling agreements, regulatory orders, permits and audited government records.
  2. Government operating and financial records; EPA, DOE, Berkeley Lab and similar technical sources.
  3. Company disclosures, clearly labeled as company claims.
  4. Responsible secondary reporting used to locate or contextualize primary evidence, not replace it.

Rules that prevent false precision

Index and size rules

Lifecycle states

Every status is a dated evidence label, not a prediction: proposed, approved, under construction, preleasing, operating, expanding, paused, withdrawn, expired, closed, demolished or unknown. An approval is not construction; construction is not operation; and an unknown is not a zero or an absence.

How the deepest state indexes compare

Indiana and Ohio use the same field standard, but their published rows still have different units and depths. The table shows why these inventories are useful without being additive statewide totals.

Evidence areaIndianaOhioRequired before comparable totals
Projects + facilities9 primary-evidence project/campus records plus one nonphysical contract ledger; 21 facility research records20 mixed-register records: 19 project/campus and 1 operating facility; 29 separate facility/building records; 43 separate municipal leadsReconcile the research-lead list to campuses, buildings and provider presences.
Lifecycle + historyWithdrawn and expired records retained; former-name audit incompleteCurrent, preleasing and unresolved stages separated; acquisition and closure audit incompletePreserve proposals, renames, acquisitions, closures and withdrawals as dated events.
Power, water and outcomesPartialPartialKeep incompatible power, water, employment and fiscal measures separate.
Claim checking8 sourced claim records10 sourced claim recordsUse the same verdict vocabulary and dated evidence standard.

National aggregation rules

Complete-inventory protocol

  1. Build a discovery union from operator lists, state and local records, utility and commission dockets, permits, tax and incentive records, historical archives, and commercial directories used only as leads unless licensed.
  2. Resolve each lead to a project, campus, physical building, provider presence or historical event. Unresolved leads stay visible and out of confirmed totals.
  3. Check current and former names, subsidiaries, acquisitions, closures and withdrawals so a rename neither deletes nor duplicates a site.
  4. Publish a statewide total only after the named source families and research leads have been reconciled to the same record unit.
  5. Keep monitoring after publication. A census is a dated snapshot, not a permanent claim.
The hard limit on “every”No public method can prove that an undisclosed private server room does not exist. DataCenterData therefore defines complete as every evidence-identified record within a named, dated source audit. The machine-readable common standard applies the same identity, lifecycle, power, water, economics and evidence fields to every state.

Document packets and watch points

A dossier’s source packet lists the controlling or evidentiary records reviewed and explicitly names missing agreements. Page or section locators identify the relevant provision when possible. A watch point may be a date, phase trigger, annual filing, docket event or replacement proposal; an unknown date remains unknown rather than becoming an invented deadline.

Corrections and commercial independence

We publish the source, source period, last-reviewed date and uncertainty with each finding. Better primary records should lead to a visible correction. Sponsorship, if ever accepted, cannot buy a verdict, select only favorable projects, delay a finding or suppress a correction. Editorial findings and commercial relationships remain separate and disclosed.

“Second review complete” means a separate, software-assisted review pass that did not author the record re-read every cited source. It is a workflow check, not a human or outside audit.

LicensingThe deep evidence ledger and public Indiana records are assembled from linked primary or first-party sources. Citizens Action Coalition’s public map informs the attributed discovery queue, but we found no machine-readable reuse license on review. Its complete row set and coordinates are therefore withheld from public redistribution pending permission or independent reconstruction. Source documents retain their own rights, and public accessibility is never treated as permission to scrape a proprietary database.