WSI World Suffering Index
Profiles How to read Method Pilot archive
WSI v1 · Profiles-first release

Publishing country-year profiles before rankings

WSI is being released as a growing set of country-year profiles, not yet as a global leaderboard. Each profile reports a WSI Core figure — a conservative, lower-bound estimate of suffering from the harms and time windows currently included under WSI v1 rules.

What is published now

Country-year profiles with transparent scope statements, module breakdowns, and source-linked assumptions. WSI Core is presented first because it is the most defensible basis for future comparability.

What is not claimed yet

The current site does not claim a complete global ranking of suffering. Measured USU is a lower bound on suffering for the included modules and windows, and coverage still varies across published profiles.

Profiles

Featured profile first, then a pilot archive. Homepage presentation is intentionally restrained: Core only, rounded, and paired with scope context.

Brazil 2024
Current release candidate · WSI Core shown · lower-bound interpretation
Current release candidate
WSI Core
2.25M
USU, rounded
WSI Core per 100k
1,059
Population denominator included
Coverage
Partial
Current headline reflects currently audited core rows only
Current scope: headline figure presently reflects audited displacement-related core rows from the Rio Grande do Sul floods. Additional tracked modules (for example dengue and broader disruption) are being developed separately and are not implied by the current homepage number.

Open Brazil 2024 profile draft →

Pakistan 2022
Pilot archive
Pilot archive

Flood, health, and food-security profile built under conservative defaults. Displayed as archive while presentation standards are being finalized.

Turkey 2023
Pilot archive
Pilot archive

Earthquake-related displacement and injury profile kept as a methodology pilot pending additional harmonization.

Bangladesh 2023
Pilot archive
Pilot archive

Country-year profile with dengue, malaria, measles, displacement, and acute food insecurity under lower-bound rules.

Philippines 2023
Pilot archive
Pilot archive

Typhoon/disaster displacement plus selected WHO-tracked health modules. Held in archive until country-page format is finalized.

How to read WSI

Presentation discipline is part of the methodology. The site should teach readers how to interpret the metric before inviting cross-country comparisons.

WSI Core

The primary public figure. It is the most conservative, most comparable layer of the system and is the only number recommended for cautious cross-profile reading.

WSI Extended

A broader measured total that includes optional modules. It is useful for within-profile interpretation, but it is not the default public comparison number while coverage still differs across countries.

Scope statement

Every profile should state what was included, what windows were used, and what major omissions remain. Measured USU is always interpreted as a lower bound on suffering for the included harms and time windows.

Current publishing rule

  • Show Core on the homepage
  • Treat older country-years as Pilot archive
  • Avoid global rankings for now
  • Keep deaths/context metrics for detail pages later
  • Publish downloads and sources only when a profile is audit-ready

Method and status

WSI uses the Universal Suffering Unit (USU) as a calibrated, additive unit. The website is intentionally paced: methodology first, country-year profiles second, rankings later if warranted.

Near-term plan

  • Expand the number of 2024 country-year profiles
  • Standardize country-page outputs and downloads
  • Publish per-profile source tables and scope statements
  • Only consider broader ranking once coverage is genuinely comparable

Current status

The project currently has multiple completed/pilot country-years. The next phase is presentation discipline: publishing profile pages that are visually clear, methodologically transparent, and conservative in their claims.