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World

🌍 World View snapshot ICG/ACLED · IPC · FCDO · GDACS · WHO · our energy scorecard — as at 20 Jul 2026

Heightened / emergency level Severe / highest concern
i Hover or tap a highlighted country for a summary of what is happening and why. Levels are not our judgement: conflict follows the International Crisis Group and ACLED assessments; famine follows the IPC phase system the UN uses. The one exception is Energy, which is our own published scorecard — no independent body grades energy security — and its callouts say so. Dated, sourced, refreshed monthly — see for how the levels work. GeoDynamics is the one layer that is not a judgement at all: it is the shape of the ground and the sea floor, so no country is highlighted and hovering one tells you nothing. Hover a marked point instead.

📰 World news snapshotseeded by the categories the map covers

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🌍 How the world layers work

The levels come from independent assessors, not from us
Every layer uses two shades of its own colour: darker means severe, lighter means heightened. Conflict follows the International Crisis Group's monthly CrisisWatch tracker and ACLED's event data: severe marks active major armed conflict; heightened marks rising tension, cross-border exchanges or fragile ceasefires. Famine follows the UN-backed IPC phase system: severe marks confirmed famine or "highest concern" (people in Phase 5, catastrophe); heightened marks Phase 4 emergencies and hunger hotspots.
Summaries describe status, not blame
Each callout states what is happening, since when, and the documented drivers (war, drought, access constraints) in one or two sentences, per the site-wide neutrality rule. Where a conflict involves two states, both appear with the same wording.
Travel advice — the Foreign Office's own tiers, relayed
Darker blue marks countries where the FCDO advises against all travel; lighter blue marks "all but essential travel" or advice against travel to parts of a country. This is His Majesty's Government's published advice, relayed unchanged — travelling against it usually invalidates insurance. Every callout links to the full country page on GOV.UK; always check it before booking.
Disease — the WHO's own outbreak gradings, relayed
Severe marks the gravest current outbreaks — cholera with extreme fatality rates, the centre of a declared regional emergency, the last wild-polio countries; heightened marks significant active outbreaks. Sources are the WHO's Disease Outbreak News and multi-country updates, PAHO emergency declarations, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the US CDC — relayed with their own figures and dates, never our judgement. This layer describes outbreaks where they are happening; it is not travel advice — for that, the FCDO layer is the authority.
Disasters — two live registers, worst level wins
Two sources are merged. GDACS (run by the UN and European Commission) is a modelled system: it fires on earthquakes it locates, cyclones it tracks, river floods it forecasts, volcanoes, droughts and wildfires, and grades each red, orange or green by the need for international help — a serious wildfire in France is usually green because France responds itself. All three tiers are shown, green as monitored in the lightest shade. But a modelled system only sees the hazards it models: the Nepal–Tibet glacier flood of August 2026, which killed hundreds, never appeared in it. So the Red Cross emergencies register (IFRC GO) is merged in too — entered by people as operations begin, with the movement's own red, orange and yellow grades. Where both list a country, the worse grade shows; every callout names the register it came from. Everything either register returns is shown, green included — the grades measure the call for outside help, not the size of the story, so a green country is one whose own services are dealing with something the register is still tracking. Neither is complete — a country whose own Red Cross handles an event domestically may not appear in GO — and where an event is in neither, it can still be added by hand in the monthly review. Live where the fetch succeeds; otherwise a dated snapshot stands.
Energy — the one layer scored by us, and it says so
Energy security has no ICG or IPC — no independent body grades countries — so this layer is StreetOwl's own scorecard: eight regions scored on ten indicators (import dependency, stock cover, chokepoint exposure, refining, gas storage and who controls the emergency stocks) against fixed, published thresholds. Darker means a worse composite: severe is Critical, lighter is Stressed, and pale is Watch or Secure — every scored region is painted, so pale means "assessed and calmer", not "no data". The same engine and the same figures drive the UK tab's "Will Britain run short of fuel?" tile, where each indicator is shown with its source and date. Gas storage refreshes live from GIE's AGSI+ platform; the rest are dated official figures that the engine marks stale as they age. Regions are scored as blocs, so every country in a region shows its region's verdict — the callout names the region it came from.
In numbers — measured figures, no judgement, checked daily
The second row of buttons colours every country by a published number rather than by an assessor's level. Population colours by headcount and the callout adds fertility, birth and death rates and natural change; CO₂ colours by total emissions and adds per-person and share-of-world; Manufacturing colours by share of GDP and adds share of world manufacturing; Murder rates is intentional homicide per 100,000; Food import dependency is the share of a country's cereal supply that is imported (cereals are the only food group any publisher measures this way). Darker means more; five bands, each holding a fifth of the countries with data, so the map shows where a country sits among the others, not a fixed threshold. Sources are the World Bank (which relays the UN Population Division and UNODC), Our World in Data (Global Carbon Budget) and FAOSTAT; two figures — natural change and share of world manufacturing — are our own arithmetic from two of their series and are marked so in the callout. Murder is the only crime figure shown, because it is the only one comparable between countries: other police statistics measure how much gets recorded as much as how much happens. Each figure carries its own year and its ten-year change — a publisher's latest may be two or three years old — and the site checks the sources every morning, so a new release appears the day after it lands.
A snapshot, refreshed monthly
The world changes faster than any static page; every entry is dated (currently as at 20 July 2026) and the whole layer set is refreshed monthly from the sources' own updates. Live wiring in a later build.

Sources: International Crisis Group CrisisWatch, ACLED, IPC/FAO-WFP Hunger Hotspots, UN OCHA. General information.

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