Methodology

How the Scanner Works

A transparent look at the data sources, selection criteria, and computation behind our location intelligence platform.

Data Sources

Climate Data

Global annual-mean temperature bands from WorldClim v2.1 BIO1, processed into multiple 2°C classes. The scanner filters these climate polygons dynamically from the temperature slider.

Airport Networks

International airport locations with hub tier classification (1/2/3). Used to compute proximity-to-access scores for each candidate zone.

Political Stability

World Bank Governance Indicators — six dimensions including political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, control of corruption, and voice & accountability.

Population Density

Gridded population density maps classifying terrain into high, medium, and low density zones. Used to ensure seclusion criteria are met.

Property Intelligence

Curated country-level data on visa accessibility, cost of living, internet infrastructure, healthcare quality, and digital nomad visa availability.

Selection Criteria

Candidate zones must satisfy all of the following simultaneously:

  • Fall within the selected annual-mean temperature band (slider-driven climate range)
  • Be located in a country scoring above the stability threshold (default: 50/100)
  • Have an international airport within the configurable distance range (default: 100–300 km)
  • Have population density below the maximum threshold (default: ≤25 per km²)

Zone Computation

The scanner performs geometric intersection of all data layers: stable country polygons are intersected with the climate band, then with low-density areas, then filtered by airport proximity. The resulting geometries are candidate zones—regions that satisfy every criterion simultaneously.

Precomputed zones use a default parameter set for fast first paint. Once data is loaded, a web worker performs live geometric recomputation (airport donut bands × climate × stability × population density) as filters change, then streams updated zones back to the map.