The LandIQ Score
6 pillars. One number. Re-weighted for what you want to build.
Every parcel is scored 0–100 across six weighted pillars. The pillars never change — but how much each one counts depends on whether you're farming it, building on it, or putting solar on it.
- Climate95/10020% weight
- Risk65/10020% weight
- Infrastructure38/10020% weight
- Terrain80/10015% weight
- Soil93/10015% weight
- Land Coverno data10% weight
The pillars
What each one actually measures.
Six signals, each from a named source. No black box.
Terrain
Elevation, slope, and whether the land is actually buildable.
NASA SRTM 30m
Climate
Rainfall, temperature, sunshine hours, and solar yield.
Open-Meteo · NASA POWER · PVGIS
Soil
pH, organic carbon, clay/sand balance, and overall soil quality.
ISRIC SoilGrids
Risk
Seismic history, protected-area proximity, and river setback, combined.
USGS · SINAC · SNIT
Infrastructure
Distance to roads, towns, hospitals, schools, and services.
OpenStreetMap
Land Cover
What's actually on the ground — forest, agriculture, urban, water.
OSM / ESA
The sectors
The same land gets a different verdict.
These are the real scores for the 6.4985 ha parcel above. Excellent farmland. Only fair to build on. Nothing about the land changed — only what you'd want from it.
| Sector | Terrain | Climate | Soil | Risk | Infrastructure | Land Cover | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| agricultural | 15% | 30% | 40% | 10% | 10% | 5% | 90.4 EXCELLENT |
| solar | 5% | 45% | 5% | 10% | 25% | 10% | 72.1 GOOD |
| general | 15% | 20% | 15% | 20% | 20% | 10% | 70.2 GOOD |
| development | 25% | 10% | 5% | 20% | 30% | 10% | 63.2 FAIR |
| conservation | 5% | 15% | 10% | 10% | 5% | 55% | 62.3 FAIR |
Read across a row to see what that use case cares about. Conservation weights land cover at 55%; solar weights climate at 45%. Same six pillars, entirely different question.
What it doesn't do
The score is a filter, not a verdict.
It's built to tell you which parcels deserve a closer look — and a real one from a professional.
It does not read the title registry
No liens, no encumbrances, no ownership history, no court annotations. LandIQ identifies the parcel and maps it; establishing clean title is a lawyer's job, and you should still hire one.
Missing data is shown as missing
When a source has no coverage for a parcel — as OpenStreetMap doesn't for land cover across much of rural Guanacaste — we show a gap rather than a number we invented.