Code efficiency with many records

I have a bunch of functions that return strings based upon score ranges. Then I have another function that sums everything up and assigns a numeric weight.

@property
def risk_status(self):
    """ This function assigns numeric weight to risks. It returns an over all integer score. """

    # Build a string of risks, ie "High Risk@At Risk@@Extreme Risk"
    raw_string_of_risks = self.si_risk + '@' + self.aggbs_risk + '@' + self.cfimb_risk + '@' + self.cfiab_risk + '@' + self.cei_risk

    # Build a list ["High Risk", "At Risk", "Extreme Risk"]
    risks = raw_string_of_risks.split('@')

    # Formula for over all risk status. ["High Risk", "At Risk", "Extreme Risk"] => 2+1+3 = 6
    status = risks.count("At Risk")*1 + risks.count("High Risk")*2 + risks.count("Extreme Risk")*3

    return status

I'm afraid with a gazillion records this property might slow things down. It will never get a string longer than 65 characters to parse, but will doing this over and over again really slow things down?

Concatenating an splitting seems like you're making extra work for yourself. I suggest summing the results of a string-to-integer translation.

from collections import defaultdict

_RISK_SCORE = defaultdict(int, [('Extreme Risk', 3), ('High Risk', 2), ('At Risk', 1)])

@property
def risk_status(self):
    """ This function assigns numeric weight to risks. It returns an overall integer score. """
    return sum(self._RISK_SCORE[r] for r in (
        self.si_risk,
        self.aggbs_risk,
        self.cfimb_risk,
        self.cfiab_risk,
        self.cei_risk,
    ))

StackExchange Code Review Q#46314, answer score: 3