Specimens Under Care

Definition

Specimens Under Care (SUC) is the integer headcount of distinct living accessions currently held under active cultivation within GreenWorld Sector-7. A specimen is counted from the moment its accession record transitions to UNDER_CARE and is removed on transition to DEACCESSIONED, HARVESTED, or EXPIRED. Clonal propagules are counted individually once rooted and tagged; seed lots in cold dormancy are excluded until germination is logged.

Why it matters

SUC is the denominator beneath nearly every per-specimen resource metric — energy, water, nutrient, and dispatch load all normalize against it. It is also the facility's hard capacity governor: cultivation surface, mesh sensor budget, and pollinator-swarm coverage are sized to a planning ceiling of 1.30 M specimens. When SUC drifts toward that ceiling CHLORA throttles new accession approvals and surfaces the count on the Operations Dashboard so the Directorate can stage capacity ahead of saturation.

Formula

SUC is a direct ledger count, reconciled rather than computed. The reconciliation model is:

SUC(t) = Σ accessions where state ∈ {UNDER_CARE}
         counted at reconciliation epoch t

Reconciliation (every 15 min):
  base   = last committed ledger count
  Δin    = accessions promoted to UNDER_CARE since t−1
  Δout   = accessions deaccessioned/harvested/expired since t−1
  SUC(t) = base + Δin − Δout

Integrity check:
  tag_scan_count  = live RFID/optical tag reads (Spectral Canopy Array)
  if |SUC(t) − tag_scan_count| / SUC(t) > 0.5%  →  flag RECONCILE_DRIFT,
     hold count, dispatch inventory audit ticket (VC-MET-301 queue).

No interpolation: SUC is a step function updated only at reconciliation.

Inputs

Units & Scale

SUC is a non-negative integer reported with thousands separators. It is exactly additive across cultivation zones — facility SUC is the simple sum of zone counts — and is never averaged or interpolated between reconciliation epochs. Precision is unit (one specimen). A staleness flag is raised if the ledger has not committed within 20 minutes; a DRIFT flag is raised when ledger-versus-tag-scan disagreement exceeds 0.5%.

Sampling & Source

• Reconciled every 15 minutes by CHLORA against the accession ledger.
• Primary source is the accession ledger; the Spectral Canopy Array tag census is the integrity cross-check, not the count of record.
• State transitions are event-driven and applied as deltas between reconciliation epochs.
• Stale handling: no commit in 20 min → last value held and marked STALE; drift > 0.5% → count frozen and audit ticket raised.

Thresholds

Recent Trend

Facility SUC in thousands of specimens, last 14 reconciliation roll-ups:

Interpretation Guidance

Related Metrics

Related SOPs

• SOP Library — accession, deaccession, and capacity-governance procedures.
• Inventory reconciliation & drift audit on RECONCILE_DRIFT — see the SOP Library.
• Capacity-ceiling escalation & intake freeze — Monitoring Systems.