How we measure what we measure.
The substrate behind every figure on Meridian Autonomy is constructed by an external measurement instrument that operates without institutional cooperation. The instrument extracts governance topology from public evidence using large language models, classifies every edge under a four-state evidence taxonomy, and validates its outputs against pre-registered empirical predictions before the substrate is sealed. The sealed substrate is fingerprinted by a SHA-256 cryptographic hash, and findings are reported with explicit comparability classes that distinguish what may be compared across substrate versions from what may not. Every claim on this site rests on this architecture. The methodology is published in full as The Stationary Sea (Part 1: Substrate Construction) on Zenodo.
The 626,390 governance edges in the sealed substrate are classified into one of three edge-level evidence tiers. Observed edges are established by retrievable public evidence from a named source. Derived edges follow by transparent inference from observable data. Inferred edges rest on structural patterns and carry confidence tagging. The fourth state, Unknown, applies at the agent level for regulatory dimensions where no evidence has been ascertained either way. The taxonomy preserves interpretive discretion at the point of analysis: any composite metric can be computed on full evidence, on observed and derived only, or on observed alone, producing the three-score family operationalised in the rating methodology that operates on this substrate.