The World view puts every country on one map. Each one is coloured by its latest reading, and its card shows what its Country Dossier holds. Every number is computed from stored data, the same readings the Dossier and the Library use.
Flat map, globe, table
/world opens on the whole world, coloured by GDP growth, on the flat map. If you have chosen a default region, it opens on that region instead. The address bar always holds the region, layer, view and any selection, so a copied link opens exactly what you see.
- Flat map: an Equal Earth projection, which is equal-area: a country's size on the map is its size on the ground.
- Globe: drag to turn it, pinch or hold Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) and scroll to zoom, or use the + and − buttons. It turns slowly until you touch it, and never moves on its own if your device or your Appearance settings ask for reduced motion.
- Table: every country in the region, with each reading and its year or month. Every country name links to its Dossier, and every value to its signal. See *The table* below.
Hover a country for its card, or tap it on a phone. Click opens the Country Dossier. Grey land with fine diagonal lines has no reading for the layer you picked.
From the keyboard, Tab to the globe or map. The arrow keys step through the region's countries in alphabetical order, Enter opens the one you are on and Esc clears it. On the globe, + and − zoom and Shift with the arrow keys turns it.
What the colours mean
Colour by picks one layer at a time:
- GDP growth (the default): real GDP growth in the latest year the IMF reports as an actual, never a projection (IMF World Economic Outlook, October 2026; most countries 2025). Blue is growth, orange is contraction, grey is close to zero.
- Inflation and Government debt: IMF World Economic Outlook, latest actual year.
- Resilience: the Country Posture stage (thin, moderate or deep buffers). A stage describes a country against its own past and its peers. It does not rank countries. Momentum and Pressure are listed but greyed out until those axes pass their pre-registered test.
- Market return: OECD share prices, change over twelve months in local currency (47 economies).
- Discourse mentions: the share of S&P 500 companies that named the country on an earnings call in the last 90 days.
- Night lights: light at night seen from space (NASA Black Marble), change over a year. Listed but greyed out until the first readings land.
Layers that cross zero (GDP growth, market return, night lights) are diverging: three blue steps for above zero, three orange steps for below, and a grey middle. Other value layers have five steps of one teal, light to dark, that hold about equal numbers of countries. Stages use three clearly separate steps of the same teal. The legend gives each step's range.
Every colour step was checked with a colour-vision validator, in dark and light, on the map and on the globe: neighbouring steps stay distinct for full-colour and colour-blind readers, and no-data land never looks like the lowest step (changed 22 October 2026: the old ramps had steps too close to tell apart).
Resilience texture adds lines for the Resilience stage on top of any layer: crossed lines for thin buffers, single lines for moderate buffers, none for deep. It is off unless you turn it on, or your system forces high-contrast colours.
Flags
Each flag type has its own small icon on a dark badge with a light rim, so it reads over any colour. The legend explains each one and has a tick box to show or hide it; your choice is remembered. Where badges would cover a small country or each other, they move just above it on a short line. The hover card lists a country's active flags with their dates and sources.
The conflict and risk rules were fixed before the data were read:
- Armed conflict (a four-point burst): 25 or more deaths in state-based armed conflict in the latest year of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. State-based means fighting over government or territory with a government on at least one side. Major armed conflict (an eight-point burst in a ring) marks 1,000 or more. These are UCDP's own definitions of an active armed conflict and a war. Fighting between gangs or militias and violence against civilians are not counted for the flag. The hover card still shows a country's deaths from all organized violence, labelled, so a country such as Mexico shows its toll without a flag.
- Geopolitical risk elevated (a pulse line): the country's latest reading is in the top twentieth of its own history (the 95th percentile or above). The reading is the Caldara–Iacoviello Geopolitical Risk index for that country (since 1985) or GDELT's share of news events that are material conflict (last five years).
Tim changed both rules on 21 October 2026, the day the World view opened:
- Armed conflict: the flag counted all organized violence; it now counts state-based conflict only. Counting all organized violence flagged Costa Rica (142 deaths) and Argentina (45), mostly from violence by non-state groups.
- Geopolitical risk: the cut moved from the 90th percentile to the 95th. At the 90th, the flag marked 7 of the 18 countries with a GPR index, the U.S. among them.
- Sanctions programme (a barred circle): the country is named by a U.S. Treasury (OFAC) country sanctions programme or a UK geographic sanctions regime. Most are targeted at named people, firms or sectors, not a full embargo. Thematic programmes (counter-terrorism, cyber, Magnitsky) don't count. Sanctions badges are off until you tick them in the legend, since most sanctioned countries already carry a conflict badge. Palanor keeps the list by hand from the two official pages, and the card says when it was last checked (22 October 2026). The card also gives the country's Palanor count of entries on the U.S., UK and EU sanctions lists linked to it (see *Official sanctions lists*); the count shows beside the flag, and on its own when it reaches 25.
- National election ahead (a ballot box) will appear once Palanor holds a checked election calendar.
No flag is a judgement about a government or a party, and the World view never shows a political symbol.
The table
- Sort by any column: click its header, click again to reverse. Countries with no value always sort last.
- Filter with the search box, the group chips (G7, G20, BRICS, EU, euro area, OECD, the World Bank income groups and the regions) and the flag chips (in armed conflict, elevated geopolitical risk, under sanctions). Several groups match any of them; several flags must all apply.
- Columns chooses what shows, including a 1y change column for each layer: the change from a year earlier in percentage points, with ▲ and a plus sign in cyan for a rise, ▼ and a minus sign in coral for a fall, ▬ in grey for no change.
- Pick countries with the tick boxes. The map lights up your picks, or everything the filters match when nothing is picked, and dims the rest. The selection travels in the link.
Download, link and embed
Download on the map saves:
- PNG (dark or light, at twice screen resolution) or SVG: the map as you see it, with its title, legend, flags, source line, reading dates and the palanor.com mark.
- CSV of the table: one row per selected country with each value, its date and its one-year change. It is offered only when every source behind the layer allows its numbers to be passed on, the same rule as the Charts library. For other layers the map downloads as an image only.
- Copy link, and Embed (an iframe of the map that stays current) for the same layers the CSV allows.
Your region
The region switch, World | North America | LatAm | Europe | Asia-Pacific | Middle East & Africa, sits at the top of the World view, Markets and Discourse. Each region is a list of countries, and some countries sit in two: Mexico is in North America and LatAm. Middle East & Africa joins the Middle East and North Africa with Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Your default carries a pin. You choose it when you join, in Settings → Preferences (as Me) or Settings → Numen (your organization's workspace), or with Make … my default beside the switch.
- Each page remembers the region you last viewed there. When a page opens on a region other than your default for that reason, one line says so, with a link back to your default.
- Markets: North America is the U.S. read: sectors, movers, the lattice. Every other region shows OECD share prices, Taiwan's daily composites, Brazil's listed companies and government bond yields for its countries.
- Discourse: North America keeps the S&P 500, Russell 1000, MidCap 400 and size universes. Other regions show how often S&P 500 companies name each of their countries on calls and in 10-K risk factors.
- Library: opening the Library with no filters applies your default region as the geography filter (World means no filter). Clear it as usual.
Where they come from
IMF World Economic Outlook; OECD share prices (CC BY 4.0); Country Posture (Palanor, on World Bank data); Palanor's count of S&P 500 earnings calls; NASA Black Marble (public domain); Uppsala Conflict Data Program (CC BY 4.0); the Caldara–Iacoviello Geopolitical Risk Index (CC BY); GDELT; U.S. Treasury OFAC (public domain) and UK FCDO (Open Government Licence v3.0) for sanctions, plus the EU Financial Sanctions Files (European Commission, CC BY 4.0) for the listing counts; World Bank income groups (CC BY 4.0). Country boundaries come from Natural Earth via world-atlas. See also *World markets* for the share prices and Taiwan and Brazil data behind the regional Markets views.