Methodology & Trust Center
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.
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 documentationThese 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 documentationThese 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 documentationThe 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 documentationThese 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 documentationMarket 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 documentationThese 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 documentationFigures 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 documentationSanad 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.
5,542,227
Registered IDPs · 2025
5,869,779
Estimated IDPs (sum of governorate estimates) · Round 15 · 2026-04-01
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
The publication pipeline links every value to its source organization, dataset, license, and original API request or source file. This page gives each of the eight published sources 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.
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.
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.
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 attributionThe 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
AI-assistant citations
Not yet available
Monthly reports
Not yet available