Global Beta Methodology
How WhereToThrive Global Beta labels international city data, source confidence, geography levels, scoring weights, known gaps, and official research boundaries.
What Global Beta is
Global Beta is a research-screening product for building an international relocation shortlist from public, source-labeled data. It is designed to show what to research next, not to make a final move decision.
Hard boundary: WhereToThrive can help users build an international relocation shortlist. It does not provide immigration, tax, legal, healthcare, school-placement, or real-estate advice.
Location hierarchy
Global locations use a country -> region -> functional urban area / metro -> core city hierarchy. Public pages label whether each metric is city-level, FUA-level, region-level, country-level, centroid-level, proxy-level, or curated-level. Country-level rows are context only and are not presented as city-specific measurements.
Source table
| Active source | Metric years in build | Geography levels | License and attribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eurostat City Statistics (Urban Audit) | 1991, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 | city-level, FUA-level | Eurostat standard reuse policy; attribution required. Free reuse with attribution; verify current terms at ingestion. |
| Eurostat GISCO Urban Audit geography | no metric year in current build | city-level, FUA-level, centroid-level | Eurostat/GISCO reuse policy; attribution required. Reuse is generally allowed with acknowledgement of Eurostat/GISCO; verify current dataset terms at ingestion. |
| OECD city, FUA, regional, and local-area datasets | 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 | city-level, FUA-level, region-level, country-level | OECD terms and conditions; attribution required. OECD data reuse typically requires attribution and may have dataset-specific terms; verify before ingestion. |
| World Bank World Development Indicators | 2024, 2025 | country-level | World Bank open data terms; attribution required. World Bank open data is generally reusable with attribution; verify indicator-specific terms at ingestion. |
| World Bank International Comparison Program | 2025 | country-level | World Bank open data terms; attribution required. ICP outputs follow World Bank data reuse terms with attribution; verify current release terms at ingestion. |
| WHO Global Health Observatory | 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 | country-level | WHO data terms; attribution required. WHO data reuse terms vary by product and require source acknowledgement; verify current terms before ingestion. |
| NOAA GHCN and WMO climate normals | 2020 | city-level, centroid-level, proxy-level | U.S. government public data; attribution not marked required. NOAA public data is generally public domain; verify station-normal product terms and WMO caveats at ingestion. |
| DMI Denmark climate normals | 2020 | country-level | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; attribution required. DMI terms state Open Data is CC BY 4.0 and allow reuse with attribution, including commercial reuse. |
| GeoNames geographical database | no metric year in current build | city-level, centroid-level, country-level | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; attribution required. GeoNames data requires attribution under CC BY 4.0; retain source and update date in generated metrics. |
| CIA World Factbook | no metric year in current build | country-level | U.S. government public data; attribution not marked required. World Factbook content is generally public domain; confirm any third-party map or image exclusions before use. |
Scoring categories and base weights
| Category | Base weight | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Cost and housing | 24% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Climate and environment | 14% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Work and time zone | 16% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Language and practical fit | 14% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Healthcare, safety, and family | 16% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Daily life and access | 12% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
| Data confidence | 4% | Base Global Beta category weight from the shipped scoring engine. |
The live quiz scales these base weights from the user's answers. Compare pages use available normalized metric scores for transparent category summaries.
Confidence model
- Metric confidence labels the source, geography level, quality, source year, and collection date for each field.
- Location confidence summarizes completeness across source families for a city profile.
- Result confidence reflects how much a user's important categories depend on city/FUA data versus country, proxy, curated, or unavailable data.
- Cost confidence is currently low because city-level rent benchmarks are not ingested; cost context relies on country-level PPP and price-level fields.
Known gaps in this beta
- Portugal and Denmark have no 30-year WMO station-normal summer-high/winter-low values in the current NOAA ingest; pages show an explicit local-climate verification caveat.
- Comparable city-level rent benchmarks are unavailable in this build, so pages do not show invented rent numbers.
- Airport access scores are unavailable in this build and are not used for city claims.
Wave-one countries
Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland