Right to inspect
Readers can see the claims, source mappings, caveats, missing fields and review state behind a published view.
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Version 1.0.0 · public-beta
The Evidence Constitution
The operating rules for a record built by AI and trusted through inspectability, not through implied authority.
1001 Smart Cities is a map into the public record, not a substitute for it. Its job is to make claims traceable, sources inspectable, gaps visible and changes permanent.
AI may increase the breadth and consistency of the record. It may not manufacture certainty. Where a source, date, locator, conflict or decision cannot be established, the system records the absence instead of filling it with a plausible answer.
Trust is earned through inspectability: a reader must be able to move from a sentence to the claim it contains, from that claim to the sources that carry it, and from the current record to every earlier revision.
01
Claims have boundaries
Every material factual statement is represented as an addressable claim with stable identity and a visible boundary in the published text.
- The claim text is preserved verbatim or the transformation is declared.
- Compound claims are split when their parts rely on different sources.
- A claim cannot disappear from a revision without a recorded change.
02
Sources are records, not links
Every cited source has a stable identifier and a dossier that records its URL, publisher identity or known absence, type, language, temporal metadata, locator and preservation state.
- Unknown publisher names, dates and languages are stored as explicit nulls.
- A bare URL never counts as a complete dossier.
- Redirects, dead links and replacements create new events; they do not silently overwrite the old source record.
03
Time is part of the evidence
The record distinguishes when a source was published, updated, retrieved, checked, archived and added to the atlas.
- Dates are typed by meaning rather than collapsed into one timestamp.
- A current-status claim states the date to which it applies.
- Missing temporal facts remain visible and lower the completeness of the dossier.
04
A source must say what it supports
Every material claim names at least one source and every source states which claims it supports, contradicts or contextualises.
- Project-level bibliographies alone are insufficient.
- A source note describes the relevant passage or records that an exact locator is still missing.
- Conflicting sources remain linked side by side; the system does not erase the disagreement.
05
Uncertainty is structured
Unknown, disputed, estimated, derived and time-sensitive information are distinct states and are never presented as settled facts by omission.
- Caveats sit with the claim they qualify.
- Interpolation and causal interpretation are off by default.
- Evidence grades describe the strongest source class, not the truth of every sentence.
06
AI compiles; it does not confer authority
AI may extract, normalise, compare, translate, link and draft from recorded material. It may not invent facts, fill unknown fields, resolve source conflicts, or assign human and expert review states.
- AI-produced text is disclosed as such.
- A generated statement must be reproducible from its recorded claims and sources.
- Human and expert review require named, dated actions by an authorised operator.
07
History is append-only
Published corrections create a new immutable revision. Earlier revision permalinks remain available and state that they are superseded when applicable.
- Each revision has a stable URL and a content hash.
- The changelog states what changed, why and which fields were affected.
- Retractions preserve the prior record and explain the withdrawal.
08
Preparation and review are separate acts
Machine validation, human review and subject-matter review are different states with different scopes. Passing a schema or source-link check never implies that a person endorsed the claim.
- Every review state records scope, actor and date.
- Unreviewed is the default for AI-assisted migrations.
- A reviewer may accept the mapping while leaving the underlying claim disputed.
Reader rights
Right to reproduce
Stable identifiers, machine-readable records and permanent revisions make the evidence path reproducible.
Right to contest
Readers can challenge a claim, source, locator or interpretation without having to reject the entire project record.
Right to correct
Accepted corrections create a new revision and retain the history of the change.
Right to know the limits
The interface exposes what is missing, stale, inaccessible, unarchived, unlocated or unreviewed.
Right to reuse
Public records remain linkable and reusable under the stated licence, with attribution and revision identity.
Review states are not interchangeable
The baseline passports in this release are unreviewed. Machine validation confirms their structure, references and hashes; it does not confer factual authority.
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
unreviewed | Prepared or migrated, with no separate human review of this record. |
machine-validated | Structural and referential checks passed; this is not a factual endorsement. |
human-reviewed | A named operator reviewed the declared scope on the recorded date. |
expert-reviewed | A named subject-matter expert reviewed the declared scope on the recorded date. |
What this constitution refuses
- The atlas does not claim that source availability makes a claim true.
- The atlas does not hide value judgments inside neutral-looking scores.
- The atlas does not convert missing evidence into an estimate.
- The atlas does not present AI output as a human-authored or expert-reviewed publication.
Effective . A change to these rules requires a new constitution version; existing Evidence Passport revisions retain the version under which they were created.