How WorldRuler reads the map.

How unusual the media attention around a country is right now.

Measures — a live read of the global news stream, country by country: is this country being covered more or less than usual, and how much of that coverage is about security and conflict.

1. Watch the worldwide public news feed and attribute coverage to the countries it mentions.
2. Split coverage into overall attention and the security / conflict share of it.
3. Measure each country against its own 30-day normal, so a quiet country making noise stands out.
4. Compare short swings to routine daily patterns so ordinary ups and downs don't read as spikes.

Source: global public news monitoring (GDELT) · media activity, not confirmed events

How busy the airspace is versus how busy it normally is at this hour.

Measures — current air traffic over the combined theatre as a percentage of what is expected for this time of day; 100% is normal.

1. Merge live aircraft positions from several public ADS-B networks so one aircraft counts once.
2. Count distinct aircraft over trailing windows — the last 1, 2 and 6 hours.
3. Compare those counts to an expected level for this hour, built from a rolling 30-day history (day/night rhythm already accounted for), so the "normal" always tracks the last month and never drifts on old data.
4. Place the ratio in a band — Low, Normal, Elevated, High — whose edges come from that same history.

Source: adsb.lol · airplanes.live · adsb.fi · a relative indicator of tracked aircraft, not a headcount

Whether current and near-term weather helps or hinders air and sea operations at the map point.

Measures — two values: a category (Favorable / Marginal / Unfavorable), set by the single worst critical factor, and an impact score 0–100, the combined weather pressure. Read separately for aircraft and for vessels.

1. Read public-domain inputs: NOAA global weather and ocean-wave models, plus aviation advisories (SIGMET) and airport observations (METAR).
2. Check each factor — wind, visibility, thunderstorms, dust, sea state, turbulence, icing — against operational thresholds tuned per platform.
3. Set the category from the worst critical factor; build the impact score without double-counting hazards from the same weather.
4. Over water, name the sea and score seaworthiness; over land, score flight conditions.

Source: NOAA GFS / GFS-Wave · SIGMET · METAR · a doctrine estimate, not a go / no-go order

Restricted airspace and official flight notices.

Measures — notices sorted by fixed rules into High / Medium / Low importance, each carrying the reasons behind its rating. Where a notice publishes a real boundary — a polygon, an airway, a named zone — we draw that exact shape; a plain circle appears only as an honest fallback.

Source: FAA notices · published airspace catalogues

What an aircraft appears to be — inferred from open signals, never a definitive claim.

Measures — aircraft broadcast their position, and often a type code and callsign, on public ADS-B. From those open signals we describe what an airframe appears to be and its usual role. We never assert intent, or what a specific flight is doing.

1. Match the broadcast type code against public type catalogues to name the airframe; rare or new types are marked uncertain rather than forced into a guess.
2. Derive a usual role from the type and open reference data — for example a tanker, transport or surveillance-capable platform. This describes the airframe, not the mission of this particular flight.
3. Infer likely operator and origin from the registration and public registries, shown with a confidence level — an assumption, not a confirmed fact.
4. Where the signal is ambiguous, leave it ambiguous. The same airframe can serve very different roles, so we don't assign a purpose the data doesn't support.

Source: open ADS-B type codes & callsigns · public type / registration catalogues · shown as inference with confidence, not fact

Where aircraft are, and how far a sensor could geometrically see.

Measures — live positions merged from several public ADS-B feeds so one aircraft is shown once. For surveillance-capable aircraft, the range rings are a geometric line-of-sight horizon from the aircraft's live altitude, capped at a sensor's published range — an upper bound of what could be seen past the Earth's curve, not a claim the radar is on.

Source: adsb.lol · airplanes.live · adsb.fi · open registries

Ships at sea.

Measures — vessel positions from public AIS; flag derived from the ship's identity number, class from its declared type and naval registries, with military and government vessels highlighted. Describes what a ship is, not what it intends.

Source: AIS · MMSI country ranges · vessel class registry

Fixed sites and heat signatures.

Measures — a static reference layer of bases, airports, power and oil-gas sites from open datasets. NASA satellite thermal detections are matched within a few km of a site, and a learned baseline mutes constant industrial flares so only unusual heat surfaces. A hotspot near a site is a heat signature, not a confirmed strike or fire.

Source: GEM · OpenStreetMap · OurAirports · NASA FIRMS

Notices for the water.

Measures — official navigational warnings, the maritime equivalent of airspace notices, from naval and national hydrographic broadcasts, drawn as water-area advisories and filtered so expired ones drop off.

Source: NGA broadcast warnings · national hydrographic offices · Royal Navy (UKMTO)