Process
From published agenda to structured signal, in hours.
Council Pulse monitors council agenda portals across 25+ Vancouver Island municipalities. When a new agenda is published, we retrieve every item and its attached staff reports within hours of publication.
Each agenda item passes through a two-stage filter. A fast keyword scan identifies likely land-use items, then a second-pass assessment categorises each item by type (rezoning, development permit, variance, bylaw amendment) and discards procedural noise. Only development-relevant signals reach the extraction stage.
Staff reports are parsed into structured fields: address, applicant, application type, unit count, storeys, proposed use, next expected steps, likely consultants needed, and a narrative summary. Every extracted field carries a provenance tag (extracted, inferred, or enriched) so you can see what came directly from the document and what was derived from context.
Signals are geocoded, deduplicated, and stored. Free subscribers receive a weekly digest every Friday. Pro subscribers get daily alerts filtered to their chosen municipalities and keywords. Everything is searchable in the web archive.
Confidence ratings
Each signal carries a confidence rating (high, medium, low) based on the quality of the source material. We flag uncertainty rather than hiding it. Extracted fields come directly from the staff report. Inferred fields are derived from context and carry a reasoning note. Enriched fields come from third-party sources such as BC Assessment or municipal zoning bylaws.