Methodology

§ 1How a record enters

A dataset is not loaded until it appears in the source registry with its licence read and verified against the publisher’s own terms, and until that licence is on the permitted list. The check runs at two independent points: the loader refuses an unregistered or unpermitted source, and the database refuses it again through a constraint. Neither can be satisfied by intent.

The permitted licences are cc0, cc-by, cc-by-igo, cc-by-sa and odc-pddl. Share-alike sources are tracked separately so their obligations cannot leak into work that does not carry them.

§ 2Location precision

Every located thing carries a precision value, and the rendering obeys it. This is the difference between a map that reports what is known and a map that draws a confident pin over a guess.

exact_site

A published coordinate for the asset itself. Rendered as a filled mark.

neighborhood

Resolved to a neighbourhood. Rendered as a mark.

city · district · governorate · national

Coarser than a point. Rendered as a shaded administrative unit, never as a pin. Drawing a pin here would assert a precision the source does not have.

§ 3Uncertainty is drawn, not captioned

On the map, a filled mark and a hollow mark differ because the source’s own location accuracy differs. Opacity separates records published as operating from every other status. Mark size encodes nothing at all: no published magnitude justifies it, and a mark that breathes with a number the source never gave is a fabricated measurement.

No uncertainty radius is drawn around an approximate mark. The source records the accuracy as approximate but publishes no radius, so any circle we drew would be a number we invented.

§ 4Numbers discipline

No single Syrian production or capacity figure is stated as fact, anywhere: not in prose, not in a chart, not in a headline, not in a summary. Where a quantity matters, the published form is an attributed range that names its disagreeing sources and says plainly that no audited national figure exists.

This binds the site as strictly as it binds the product. Capacity fields exist in the holdings and are deliberately not published here.

§ 5Quotation and republication

A claim may carry at most one supporting quotation of twenty-five words or fewer, and only to support a fact. Article text is never republished. Snapshots are kept so a claim can be re-checked internally, and are not a public product.

§ 6Measure, never accuse

Public output describes what is observed and what a source states. It does not attribute intent, allege wrongdoing, or name private individuals. Where an observation could be read as an accusation, it is either rewritten as a measurement or not published.

§ 7Simplification is display only

The national outline on the map is simplified for drawing. It is a silhouette, never a geometric assertion, and the unsimplified source is what any spatial test runs against. When a published coordinate and the published outline disagree, the coordinate is treated as authoritative and the disagreement is disclosed rather than corrected away.

Neighbouring countries are drawn as a single unlabelled landmass with no internal borders. Drawing borders between Syria’s neighbours would take a position on several disputed lines. We are independent, so we draw none.

§ 8Names and numerals

Names appear as the source publishes them. Where a source publishes no Arabic name, the Latin name is shown inside a bidirectional isolate rather than transliterated: inventing an Arabic spelling would be the site asserting a fact about a name.

Western Arabic numerals are used in both editions. Codes, counts and coordinates are identifiers as published, and changing their digits would break a reader checking them against the source.

§ 9Low confidence goes to a person

Where extraction or geocoding confidence is low, the item is routed to a human review queue. Low-confidence facts are never published silently. Conflicting claims resolve in a stated order — latest official, then latest reported, then earliest — and the conflict itself is retained rather than overwritten.

§ 10Satellite methods, and their status

Flaring, port activity, vegetation change and nightlights each have a specified method. None has been run: no satellite data has been acquired, and the coverage frame records that as a zero rather than omitting the row. When measurement begins, each series will publish its sensor, acquisition window, processing level and detection threshold alongside the values.

Satellite work is measurement. It is never verification. That word is reserved for the consent-based Supplier Registry, and is used nowhere else on this site.

§ 11What a record does not contain

A holdings list is only honest if it states its edges. These are ours.

• No production or capacity figure is stated as fact. No audited national figure exists, and a single number presented without its range would be a claim we cannot support.
• No ownership or control assertion beyond the fields the source itself publishes.
• No security, military or armed-actor layer, in any form.
• No personal data about private individuals.
• No satellite-derived measurement. The methods are specified and nothing has been measured.
• No OpenStreetMap-derived geometry on this site.