Methodology

Country X-Ray combines data from four authoritative sources into unified country dashboards. This page documents our data pipeline, update schedule, and attribution.

Data Sources

1. World Bank — World Development Indicators

16 economic and development indicators. API: api.worldbank.org/v2. No authentication required. License: CC BY 4.0.

Update frequency: Quarterly. Data typically lags 1-2 years for economic indicators, 2-3 years for health spending and CO2.

Methodology: WDI Documentation

2. WHO — Global Health Observatory

5 health indicators. API: ghoapi.azureedge.net/api (OData). No authentication required. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

Update frequency: Annual. Data typically lags 1-3 years.

Methodology: WHO GHO Documentation

3. V-Dem Institute — Varieties of Democracy

8 democracy indices on a 0-1 scale. Annual CSV download. License: Free with citation required.

Update frequency: Annual (March). Coverage: 1789-present for most indices.

Citation: Coppedge, Michael, et al. "V-Dem Dataset." Varieties of Democracy Project.

Methodology: V-Dem Codebook

4. REST Countries

Static country metadata: names, capitals, regions, flags, borders, languages, currencies. No authentication required. License: MPL 2.0.

Data Pipeline

A Cloudflare Worker cron job runs weekly (Monday 3am UTC):

1. Fetches REST Countries metadata (all countries in one call)
2. Fetches World Bank indicators (16 indicators × all countries, parallel)
3. Fetches WHO GHO indicators (5 indicators × all countries, sequential)
4. V-Dem data is imported annually from CSV when a new version releases (March)

All data is stored in Cloudflare D1 (SQLite at edge). Static HTML pages are regenerated after each data refresh.

Important Notes

• Temporal mismatch: Different sources update at different frequencies. A country page may show 2024 GDP alongside 2022 health data alongside 2024 democracy scores. We display the data year next to each value for transparency.
• Missing data: Shown as "—". We never interpolate or estimate missing values.
• Methodology differences: World Bank and WHO may measure similar indicators differently (e.g., life expectancy). We label the source for each value.
• No editorial judgment: We present the data as-is from each source. We do not create composite indices or rankings that combine different indicators.

API

All data is available as free JSON via our API. No authentication required. CORS enabled.