Methodology

Data origin

Bamwor compiles and organizes publicly available data from authoritative sources. We do not generate original data — instead, we aggregate, structure, and present existing public-domain information in an accessible, multilingual format.

Primary sources

  • CIA World Factbook — Our primary source for country-level data including population, government, economy, geography, demographics, military, energy, communications, and transportation statistics. The World Factbook is produced by the Central Intelligence Agency and is in the public domain.
  • GeoNames — A comprehensive geographic database containing over 13 million place names and geographic features worldwide. We use GeoNames for city data, coordinates, administrative divisions, population figures for individual cities and settlements, and nearby place identification via geospatial queries.

How data is compiled

Country data from the CIA World Factbook is parsed and structured into standardized fields covering 12 thematic sections (introduction, geography, people and society, environment, government, economy, energy, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues). Each field is stored in a relational database and served through our platform.

City and geographic data from GeoNames is loaded into a PostGIS-enabled database, allowing us to perform spatial queries such as finding nearby places within a given radius. City names are available in multiple languages when provided by GeoNames.

How data is structured

  • Countries: 261 countries and territories, each with a full profile organized into 12 sections with structured statistics.
  • Rankings: Countries ranked by key indicators (population, GDP, area, life expectancy, etc.) computed directly from stored statistics.
  • Cities: Over 5 million populated places with names, coordinates, population, administrative division, timezone, and elevation.
  • Regions: Countries grouped into geographic regions following CIA World Factbook regional classifications.
  • Comparisons: Side-by-side country comparisons generated dynamically from the structured data.

Languages

All data is available in four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Country names, city names, page titles, and interface elements are fully translated. Statistical data and numeric values are presented consistently across all languages.

Update frequency

Country data is updated when new editions of the CIA World Factbook are released (typically annually). GeoNames data is updated periodically. We strive to keep information current, but some values may lag behind the most recent official publications.

Licensing

The underlying data from the CIA World Factbook is in the public domain. GeoNames data is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Bamwor's compiled datasets are made available under CC BY 4.0.