The following table provides an overview of the data sources used in InfraCompass 2020. For detailed sources on a metric level, please see Drivers. 

This tool is prepared using open source data, as available at 1 December 2019. The InfraCompass methodology is designed for objectivity, and accordingly relies on the integrity of the source data. In this regard, while the Global Infrastructure Hub recognises that some individual country data may have changed since it was collected by the open source data provider, the selection of data sources for InfraCompass is based on the best data sources available in terms of broad geographical coverage, recurrence, quality, importance to infrastructure, age and comparability of the data.

InfraCompass 2020 provides scores for 81 countries across eight drivers of infrastructure quality. Underpinning the driver scores are 41 individual metrics that have been selected due to their linkages to efficient and effective infrastructure and grouped by their relevance to each driver.

The objective of InfraCompass is to determine the key variables that impact infrastructure outcomes in a country across eight drivers:

1. Governance - Governance and institutional settings
2. Regulatory framework - Investment policy and economic regulation
3. Permits - Clarity and consistency of the permits and land acquisition process
4. Planning - Planning and infrastructure appraisal processes
5. Procurement - Efficiency of government contracting and procurement
6. Activity – The extent and nature of infrastructure investment activity and extent of private sector involvement
7. Financial markets - The availability and cost of funding for infrastructure
8. Funding capacity - The capacity of countries to invest in infrastructure over time

The following six steps were undertaken to develop InfraCompass 2020:

1. Defining the dependent (or outcome) variable: a simplified approach to determine an ‘effective’ infrastructure market culminated in using Quality of Infrastructure (from WEF Global Competitiveness Index) as a single outcome variable for the statistical modelling
2. Selecting metrics – a long list of 80 metrics was refined to a short list of 41 based on five criteria
3. Selecting countries – Aligning country coverage with the Global Infrastructure Outlook was the primary determinant. Country data quality and coverage were also considered in selecting the countries to be included.
4. Preparing the data - data was cleaned and prepared for analysis. This included the imputation of missing values, normalisation and standardisation to ensure comparability of different metrics
5. Estimating metric weights - Principal components analysis (PCA) and multivariate linear regression was used as the basis of determining weights for each metric
6. Deriving index score – index scores were derived by applying the weights to each metric in each driver.

For more details on the methodology, please see Appendix 2: Technical Appendix of the InfraCompass 2020 Report.

InfraCompass was first released in 2017 with coverage of 49 countries, and subsequently updated in 2018 to include all countries participating in the G20 Compact with Africa (CwA) initiative, leading to a total coverage of 56 countries. The product was developed with the intention to continually update it over time to demonstrate changes in countries’ infrastructure investment environment and incorporate the most recent data. As the data underlying InfraCompass has changed in the last three years, the InfraCompass Framework and tool have warranted an update as well.

The GI Hub has also taken this opportunity to re-examine the InfraCompass Framework and enhance the InfraCompass tool to provide a better user experience and deliver greater value to end users. This is largely in response to internal analysis and stakeholder feedback, which identified that user engagement and uptake of InfraCompass could be improved, particularly to deliver a more effective ‘so what?’ to its end users.

Some of the key enhancements in InfraCompass 2020 include:

• introducing country rankings at the driver level
• incorporating two new drivers into the InfraCompass Framework – Funding Capacity and Financial Markets
• including an additional 25 countries to the previous 56 countries, including five Pacific Island countries
• providing guidance for best practice for the metrics that underpin the InfraCompass framework.

For more details on the methodology refresh, please see Appendix 1: Overview of methodology refresh of the InfraCompass 2020 Report.