For decades the CIA World Factbook was one of the most widely used public references for country-level information.
Researchers, journalists, students and developers relied on it as a quick way to explore structured information about countries around the world.
Earlier this year the Factbook disappeared, leaving a noticeable gap for people who relied on it as a global reference dataset.
Since then, a few archival efforts and static snapshots have appeared online, but there has been little in the way of an actively maintained global dataset that developers can explore or integrate into their projects.
Recently I came across a project called Bamwor that aims to rebuild that type of global reference using modern data sources.
The platform aggregates data from multiple public datasets including sources such as the World Bank, UN datasets and other public references.
Some interesting things about the project:
• Profiles for 200+ countries
• Millions of data points across countries and cities
• Detailed pages for cities linked to their respective countries
• Data fields covering demographics, geography, economy and infrastructure
One particularly interesting feature is that the platform also exposes a public API so developers can query the data directly.
This makes it possible to integrate country or city level data into applications, dashboards or research tools.
If you're curious, the project is available here:
I'm curious how people here are handling global reference data since the CIA World Factbook disappeared.
Are there other datasets or APIs people are using for this now?
Top comments (1)
One thing I found particularly interesting about this dataset is the city ↔ country relationship.
The original CIA World Factbook mostly focused on country-level information, but linking cities to their respective countries with structured fields opens up a lot of possibilities for developers.
For example:
• building geographic dashboards
• enriching datasets
• powering location-based applications
Curious if anyone here has already tried the API or looked at the structure of the dataset.