commit

README.md

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ Source data: International Foundation for Valuing Impacts
 
 ![alt text](images/section-breaks/1.png) 
 
-V2 of a refactoring of the Global Value Factor Database (GVFD) by the International Founadtion for Valuing Impacts intended to enhance the original dataset for machine readability and integration into data analysis and visualisation workloads. 
+V2 of a refactoring of the Global Value Factor Database (GVFD) by the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts intended to enhance the original dataset for machine readability and integration into data analysis and visualization workloads. 
 
  ![alt text](images/section-breaks/2.png)
 
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ The International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI) produces an (open-source
 
 This database provides an array of "value factors". 
 
-Value factors are multipliers whose purpose is to convert between companies' non-environmental "impacts" (across the social and environmental realms) and into units of currency. For standardisation, all value factors convert into US Dollars. To localise them in non-USD jurisidctions, users can simply apply currency conversion after this initial calculation.
+Value factors are multipliers whose purpose is to convert companies' non-financial "impacts" (across the social and environmental realms) into units of currency. For standardization, all value factors convert into US Dollars. To localize them in non-USD jurisdictions, users can simply apply currency conversion after this initial calculation.
 
 ![alt text](images/4.png)
 
@@ -35,17 +35,17 @@ Value factors are multipliers whose purpose is to convert between companies' non
 ![alt text](images/section-breaks/3.png)
 
 
-Various global frameworks govern how companies practice accounting - the most important of which are IFRS and GAAP. These standard-setters do not (themselves) proscribe the mandate to use their methods. But their application is mandated by governments and multilaterals (who may wish to use them to standardise accounting practices within a geopolitical blog, for instance).
+Various global frameworks govern how companies practice accounting - the most important of which are IFRS and GAAP. These standard-setters do not (themselves) prescribe the mandate to use their methods. But their application is mandated by governments and multilaterals (who may wish to use them to standardize accounting practices within a geopolitical bloc, for instance).
 
 IFRS, for example, is used in more than 140 countries worldwide with an estimated 30-35,000 companies subject to its directives. Trillions of dollars are computed according to its directives and its definition of value. 
 
-As much as accounting rules seem like an unlikely subject for philosophical speculation, peel back the surface and you'll find a pandora's box of questions which impact accounting helps to explore. 
+As much as accounting rules seem like an unlikely subject for philosophical speculation, peel back the surface and you'll find a Pandora's box of questions which impact accounting helps to explore. 
 
-If nothing else, impact accounting allows us to model a financial system in which comopanies' environmental and social impacts were integrated into financial reporting. By doing so, we can answer questions like: "if this were the system ... how many companies would actually be profitable at all? And which wouldn't?"
+If nothing else, impact accounting allows us to model a financial system in which companies' environmental and social impacts were integrated into financial reporting. By doing so, we can answer questions like: "if this were the system ... how many companies would actually be profitable at all? And which wouldn't?"
 
-"Money" - the ultimate arbiter of value in the busines world - is itself an abstraction; a yardstick created by society so that cruder systems of wealth-reckoning could be replaced by one fit for the modern world. Businesses are collectives of humans which seek to improve their lives through aggregating wealth. But why should that system account only for *their* welfare and not that of those potentially impacted by their pursuit of profit?
+"Money" - the ultimate arbiter of value in the business world - is itself an abstraction; a yardstick created by society so that cruder systems of wealth-reckoning could be replaced by one fit for the modern world. Businesses are collectives of humans which seek to improve their lives through aggregating wealth. But why should that system account only for *their* welfare and not that of those potentially impacted by their pursuit of profit?
 
-Companies, like people, have effects that extend far beyond generating profit for shareholders (as determined by the rules which we proscribe for those calcualtions) and paying out money through activities like employing workers and buying goods and services from suppliers. 
+Companies, like people, have effects that extend far beyond generating profit for shareholders (as determined by the rules which we prescribe for those calculations) and paying out money through activities like employing workers and buying goods and services from suppliers. 
 
 They can improve the welfare of surrounding communities through that employment; entrench socioeconomic inequality through unfair labor practices; pollute water systems; remediate pollution in their communities. 
 
@@ -53,9 +53,9 @@ Under normative accounting rules, a company may make enormous profits while payi
 
 This happens because our societies' response to "that isn't right" has, so far, been to create a parallel mechanism of sorts for reckoning these non-financial impacts. 
 
-This has taken the form of mechanisms like ESG. Companies are urged to measure their performance in important respects like climate performance. But the metrics which measure that performance remain ringfenced out of bottom-line financial calcuations. 
+This has taken the form of mechanisms like ESG. Companies are urged to measure their performance in important respects like climate performance. But the metrics which measure that performance remain ring-fenced out of bottom-line financial calculations. 
 
-Impact accounting argues that in order to integrate companies' financial performance with their more holistic impacts (affecting people and planet), those impacts need to be translated into equivalent terms (money) and then valued in a harmonised set of accounts. 
+Impact accounting argues that in order to integrate companies' financial performance with their more holistic impacts (affecting people and planet), those impacts need to be translated into equivalent terms (money) and then valued in a harmonized set of accounts. 
 
 The argued benefits of this system:
 
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ For impact accounting to evolve into a viable practice that could eventually suc
 
 The Global Value Factor Database (GVFD) addresses the climate component of impact accounting, a domain where quantification is comparatively more straightforward. This approach is not without precedent. A well-known example is the social cost of carbon, which the IFVI dataset places at $236 per metric tonne of CO₂. Various organizations have proposed different values for this figure at different times, drawing on evolving scientific consensus.
 
-The GVDFD can be understood as an attempt to provide similar single reference values—not just for greenhouse gas emissions but for a wide range of climate-related impacts. The scope of this task is substantial. To manage it, environmental impacts are organized into categories, including:
+The GVFD can be understood as an attempt to provide similar single reference values—not just for greenhouse gas emissions but for a wide range of climate-related impacts. The scope of this task is substantial. To manage it, environmental impacts are organized into categories, including:
 
 - Air pollution
 - Land use and conservation
@@ -136,9 +136,9 @@ To achieve this, the following steps were taken:
 * To preserve numeric integrity, I removed dollar signs (`$`) from all values.
 * Currency denomination is now recorded in the dataset’s **metadata and documentation** rather than embedded in each cell.
 
-Note: some of the value factors are six decimal places. If ingesting this dataset into databases it is recommended to choose an appropriate decimal type.
+Note: some of the value factors are six decimal places. If ingesting this dataset into databases, it is recommended to choose an appropriate decimal type.
 
-Structure and Accessibility
+### Structure and Accessibility
 
 * **JSON representations** preserve the original units and structure of the GVFD.
 * **Country-level JSONs** were generated to allow users to focus on all value factors within a single nation.