SOW — State of the World™

### Published calculation hierarchy

1. Raw observations retain source, date, unit, geography, status, licensing and transformation metadata.  
2. **336 active/retired-capable parameters** are normalized to comparable 0–100 values using versioned direction, caps, completeness and missing-data rules.  
3. Parameter weights and preferred lenses generate each of **56 topic scores**.  
4. Source quality, completeness, freshness and cross-source agreement moderate confidence.  
5. Topic weights and pillar multipliers generate eight pillar signatures.  
6. Explicit signature-index component lists and index weights generate the SIID State of the World Index (SIID-SOW).  
7. Rank, score, confidence, robustness, trend, coverage/status flags and revision information are published together.

Administrators edit a private draft, validate it, inspect ranking impact and approve an effective version. Historical editions remain locked to their original methodology.

### Data-quality model

- Source quality: authority, transparency, independence and reproducibility.  
- Completeness: coverage of entities, years, parameters and required metadata.  
- Freshness: age relative to topic-specific update expectations.  
- Agreement: consistency across independent sources after harmonization.  
- Robustness: rank stability under plausible uncertainty and weight perturbations.  
- Geographic integrity: completeness of country/area codes, legal-status notes, boundary sensitivities and review dates.

Missing values and disputed geographic assignments must never be silently resolved by imputation.

### Layered geopolitical-status treatment

SOW separates four issue types and does not treat them as interchangeable:

1. **Territorial-area dispute** — a defined area meeting the evidence gate and at least one control, international-status, armed-conflict or formal adjudication/process criterion. Only this layer can create the main **Disputed Area** badge.
2. **Boundary-line issue** — disagreement about alignment, delimitation, coordinates, watershed, river channel or a maritime boundary. It receives a line annotation or footnote, not an area badge.
3. **External territorial claim** — a claim over territory under stable administration by another state or authority, without divided control or competing administration. It is recorded only when the evidence policy is satisfied and does not create an area badge.
4. **Recognition/status question** — statehood, recognition or final-status metadata maintained separately from territorial scoring and area flags.

The disputed-area badge applies only to the named territory, never automatically to the entire associated country. Generic historical claims, internet lists, rhetorical assertions and unresolved boundary lines are insufficient. Evidence is date-stamped, re-verified and shown with neutral map treatment. SOW does not adjudicate sovereignty or legal merits.


### Potential flash points

SOW maintains a separate red-marker risk-watch layer for potential land and maritime/coastal flash points. These markers are schematic, periodically reviewed and do not create or alter any disputed-area, boundary-line, external-claim, recognition, sovereignty or legal status.

### Governance safeguards

- Human editorial responsibility remains mandatory for public editions.  
- Methodology, transformations, country coverage, status decisions and revisions are versioned.  
- Synthetic data are visibly labelled and cannot be represented as verified observations.  
- Corrections, appeals, methodological critiques and geopolitical-status challenges require documented workflows.  
- Forecasts are timestamped, probability-based, resolved against outcomes and calibrated.  
- Automated harvesting must preserve raw captures, source provenance, contradictions, geographic status and audit logs.


### Administrative methodology control

- Parameter, topic, pillar, lens, quality and signature-index settings are editable only after administrator authentication.  
- Draft changes do not affect public calculations. Publication requires validation, an impact preview and an approval record.  
- The previous methodology and coverage/status catalogues are automatically snapshotted before publication or rollback.  
- Historical editions are immutable; recalculation creates a new version rather than overwriting a published record.  
- Coverage and special-status controls remain separate from performance scoring and do not imply recognition or legal judgement.