Scoring Methodology

Case Intensity Score

The intensity score is a comprehensive measure, ranging from 1 to 5 (from low to high severity), used to assess the impact of a specific Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) event on a particular company. The case intensity is derived from the underlying case documents and corresponds to the highest intensity identified among those documents.

How It Works

The Intensity Score is built in two steps:

Step 1: Structured severity

The severity of the event is assessed along two axes, 'Reversibility' and 'Corporate & Stakeholder' Reach. The two axes are combined through a structured-severity mapping that yields a severity value.

Step 2: Company responsibility

The continuous Structured Severity Score is then adjusted for the entity's role in the event on a continuous scale, ranging from:

• Direct: The adverse impact is directly caused by the entity's own corporate assets, products, or management decisions.
• Indirect : The impact occurs within the entity's upstream/downstream value chain or third-party business relationships, or the entity provided enabling financing/infrastructure.

Final Output

Combining severity with responsibility produces the final 1 to 5 Event Intensity.

Case Intensity

Case-level intensity is derived as the maximum intensity score observed across all Events within the Case.

More information about the Intensity Score is available here.

Controversy Exposure Score

The Controversy Exposure Score (CES) is a continuous score ranging from 0 to 100. It incorporates SESAMm’s proprietary Intensity, Volume, and Novelty scores to provide an ongoing, real-time measure of a company’s exposure to ESG risks, allowing our clients to understand and monitor risk over time.

Events are the primary input to SESAMm’s Controversy Exposure Score (CES), as the score is computed from Event-level signals such as intensity and volume, then aggregated at the entity level. Cases also directly influence CES through the novelty component, which is based on case age. The CES therefore combines Event-level scoring with Case-level temporality. More information on the CES is available here.

UNGC Violation Screening

SESAMm automatically screens ESG Events against the 10 United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Principles, flagging those that represent potential breaches. Each event is classified into one of three risk levels (Violator, Watchlist, or Low Risk) based on the severity of the potential breach and the degree of company responsibility. The classification also identifies the specific UNGC principles implicated.

UNGC classification is calculated at the Event level only. More information on the UNGC Violation Screening is available here.