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Syria Data Observatory A Sanad Data initiative

Methodology & Trust Center

Methodology

Every major page should explain where a number came from, when it was updated, whether it can be downloaded, and how it can be verified.

The trust center documents sources, dataset versions, quality notes, licenses, measurement limits, and reproducibility.

What each source can and cannot tell us

HDX HAPI

Standardized national humanitarian indicators from the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data. The INFORM Risk Index is a 0–10 composite of hazard, vulnerability, and coping capacity, updated yearly (CC BY). People-in-need and targeted figures come from the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO): "in need" is the total requiring assistance and "targeted" is whom the response plans to reach — both are planning estimates, not a census (CC BY-IGO 3.0). Values are national.

Official methodology documentation

Ember

These are national electricity indicators for Syria compiled by Ember from official and international sources, with some values estimated or modelled to fill gaps, and are not governorate-level measurements. Generation and demand data measure electricity produced and consumed on the grid, and may not fully capture the private generators widespread during the electricity crisis. Values are annual and national.

Official methodology documentation

UN Comtrade

Syria rarely reports its own trade to Comtrade, so Sanad uses mirror statistics: what partner countries report importing from or exporting to Syria. The partner direction is flipped to Syria’s flow (a partner’s export to Syria is a Syrian import), the largest partners are ranked, and the remainder is folded into "other". Coverage and completeness depend on how fully partners report, and recent years may be revised. Values are national and annual.

Official methodology documentation

WHO Global Health Observatory

Annual Syria-level values as published by WHO — some modelled estimates, some nationally reported — and continuously revisable. Sanad shows only the national both-sexes total: for each indicator it keeps the aggregate row (both sexes, and the total wealth-quintile or residence band where those dimensions exist), one value per year, with no sex or governorate breakdown. The latest available year varies by indicator.

Official methodology documentation

UNESCO UIS

These are UNESCO UIS national series for Syria, both sexes, not governorate-level measurements. Some values are reported by national authorities and some are UIS estimates, and coverage varies sharply by year—out-of-school rates run to recent years while some spending and completion figures predate the war. Sanad keeps the national total for each year.

Official methodology documentation

NASA POWER

These values are MERRA-2 climate reanalysis model output, not rain-gauge measurements. They are useful for reading trends, but local accuracy is affected by model biases and by how complex terrain is represented within a grid cell. Sanad samples the roughly 0.5° monthly grid at each governorate centroid; this is not a spatial average of the governorate.

Official methodology documentation

FAOSTAT

These are national series for Syria, not governorate-level measurements. FAOSTAT distinguishes official figures from values estimated or imputed by FAO; the war years include estimated or imputed observations and should not all be read as Syrian official reporting.

Official methodology documentation

OpenStreetMap

These are counts of features mapped in OpenStreetMap, so they measure mapping activity and coverage rather than the true number on the ground. Community contributors create the data, and coverage may be incomplete or uneven between areas. The data is licensed under ODbL and must be attributed to OpenStreetMap contributors.

Official methodology documentation

World Development Indicators — World Bank

The World Bank compiles World Development Indicators from national and international sources, with series-specific methodologies. Syria series contain long gaps caused by interrupted reporting and conflict conditions, and some indicators stop before recent years. A blank means no value is available, not zero.

Official methodology documentation

UNHCR

These series cover populations registered or otherwise recorded within the categories included in UNHCR statistics; they are not a census of every displaced person. Data comes primarily from governments and UNHCR operations, and coverage varies by country and population category, so unregistered displacement is not fully counted.

Official methodology documentation

World Food Programme (WFP)

Market prices collected monthly by the World Food Programme from market monitors since 2011. Sanad publishes, per governorate, the median of that governorate's market prices for the month — not a single market and not below the governorate. SYP and USD are separate series (USD is converted at the exchange rate at collection time). Some values are WFP "aggregate" figures. Unofficial/parallel-market exchange rates are not included.

Official methodology documentation

IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM)

These are field estimates from IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) baseline rounds, activated in Syria from February 2025 after the December 2024 shift — not a registration of individuals. They count internally displaced persons and returnees per governorate per round, and figures are revised round to round. They differ methodologically from UNHCR registration counts, so the two should not be summed or directly compared.

Official methodology documentation

OCHA Financial Tracking Service (FTS)

Figures are as reported to FTS by donors and implementing organizations and are continuously revisable. Sanad includes paid contributions and commitments and excludes pledges. The series covers only the primary inside-Syria response plan; it never adds the regional 3RP or global/event-specific appeals. Data is national with no governorate breakdown.

Official methodology documentation

A worked example: why two internal-displacement numbers?

Sanad publishes two credible IDP figures because they answer two different questions. Showing them side by side — without summing them or picking a winner — is the methodology itself.

UNHCR

5,542,227

Registered IDPs · 2025

Figure source: UNHCR. IOM DTM estimates current presence with a different scope and method.

What it measures
Registered IDP stock at year end
Method
Registration and official statistics compiled by UNHCR
Frequency
Annual
Geography
National (all of Syria)
Revisability
Stable once published for the year

IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM)

5,869,779

Estimated IDPs (sum of governorate estimates) · Round 15 · 2026-04-01

Figure source: IOM DTM. UNHCR publishes an annual registered stock with a different scope and method.

What it measures
Estimated IDP presence at assessment time
Method
Field assessment rounds through key informants
Frequency
Monthly rounds since March 2025
Geography
Per governorate (14 governorates)
Revisability
Revisable from round to round

The two values are never summed or compared directly as the same measure, and their difference is not interpreted as a flow or an error.

Inside any institution, directorates often report the same quantity under different definitions. Building a verified indicator catalog that keeps definitions side by side — instead of blending them — is a core Sanad service. Explore the DTM data

Source

The publication pipeline links every value to its source organization, dataset, license, and original API request or source file. This page gives each published source a “what this data is and is not” note and a link to its official methodology. A connector is added to the published catalog only after its license is recorded in dataset metadata and its methodology note is added to this page.

Dataset version

Every sync calculates a SHA-256 checksum of the source payload. If it matches the latest version, the run is recorded as unchanged without creating a version or republishing values. When it changes, the system creates an identifier from the retrieval time and the first 12 checksum characters, such as 20260712012826-a1ad44b711cc, and stores the retrieval date. Every published value references the version that produced it; the indicator page shows that identifier alongside the source’s last successful sync date.

Quality notes

Each row stores a confidence classification and a numeric quality score. The classifications in use are “Source-published,” “Estimated,” “Modeled,” and “Crowdsourced”; they appear on Syria Today cards and in the indicator page’s data-quality details. FAOSTAT rows also retain the source’s separate Estimated and Imputed flags. A missing value remains blank and is never converted to zero, while estimates and model values retain their classification rather than being presented as source-published figures.

License and downloads

Every dataset page displays its source license, while the Data licenses and attribution page collects required credit and links to official terms for the sources documented there. Interactive dashboards let readers download filtered rows as CSV or Excel from a chart or table menu. Reuse and redistribution remain subject to the source license, including attribution and ODbL share-alike for altered or derived OpenStreetMap databases.

Review data licenses and attribution

Roadmap — in development and not yet available

The items below are not currently available as public features. Operating controls that already work and filtered downloads available from dashboards are excluded from this list.

Bulk dataset downloads

Not yet available

Public API

Not yet available

Monthly reports

Not yet available

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