Component / Low importance
Funding gap
Unmet capital need versus funded plan, normalized to median household income.
What it captures
Funding gap is included because it is the most-structural single signal of why a utility might consider P3. The component captures the dollar gap between identified capital need and currently-funded capital plan, normalized to median household income to account for affordability.
Utilities with funding gaps above the cohort 90th percentile have a meaningful structural reason to consider P3: the gap cannot reasonably be closed through traditional rate-base mechanisms without exceeding affordability thresholds.
Source categories
- Federal unmet-need extracts
- Utility capital plans
- Federal water infrastructure needs assessments
Specific dataset identifiers and feed names are not published. Subscribers can request the full source list under NDA.
Refresh cadence
Annual
Importance class
Low importance
Specific weight not published.
Why this importance class
Funding gap is highly correlated with infrastructure age and financial distress. The weight reflects the marginal information content above those two components.
Edge cases
- Utilities with no published capital plan have a missing funding-gap signal; the component falls back to a regional cohort median.
- Recently-acquired or recently-merged utilities may carry an apparent funding gap that reflects the merger transition rather than steady-state need.
See it applied
The Funding gap component shows up on every utility scoring panel in the live workspace and on every dossier. Read the national rankings (sanitized demo) to see component scores ranked across the cohort, or read the curated dossiers for the analyst-authored read on how the component drives a P3 case at named municipalities.