World Factbook & Atlas

January 14, 2024

Bug fixes, content update, and performance improvements.

April 26, 2023

Bug fixes and performance improvements

March 27, 2019

• Database updates • Minor bug fixes

November 27, 2018

• Enhanced for iOS 12 • Ready for iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max • Database updates

November 22, 2017

• Enhanced for iOS 11 • Ready for iPhone X • Minor bug fixes

November 21, 2017

• Updated country database • Bug fixes

December 2, 2016

- Updated country database - iOS 10 support - Bug fixes

November 18, 2014

- Rebuilt from the ground up for iOS 8 - Support for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus - New app icon - Database updates: In the People and Society category, several important new demographic fields have been included: "Mother's mean age at first birth," "Contraceptive prevalence rate," and "Child labor - children ages 5-14." "Dependency ratios" - which are a measure of the age structure of a population and which relate the number of individuals that are likely to be economically "dependent" on the support of others - have also been added - after the "Age structure" entry. In the Transnational Issues section, the "Refugees and internally displaced persons" entry has a new 'stateless persons' subfield. Statelessness is the condition whereby an individual is not considered a national by any country. The Economy category has two new fields. "GDP - composition, by end use" shows who does the spending in an economy: consumers, businesses, government, and foreigners. "Gross national saving" shows how much an economy saves on its own, and how much it could invest, in the absence of any foreign investment. In the Geography section, the "Freshwater withdrawal" entry has been updated with the latest available data. For many countries, the use and consumption of freshwater is difficult to quantify yet it is a vital resource often under stress. The expansion of the "Ports and terminals" entry was recently completed in the Transportation section for all countries. In the Government category, the "Constitution" entry was recently thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated for all countries and now includes dates of previous constitutions, dates of constitution development and enactment, and amendment dates. In the Economy sections of most countries the macroeconomic numbers have been updated with the most recent data available.

May 1, 2013

- iOS 7 compatible - Content update - Various health fields in the People and Society section - including "Hospital bed density," "Physician density," "Health expenditures," "Drinking water source," "Sanitation facility access," and "Children under 5 underweight" - have recently been updated for all countries. - In the Economy and Energy categories, the information and data for most of the fields have been updated. - Several Military fields have been updated including "Military branches," "Military service age and obligation," and "Military expenditures." - A new "Demographic profile" field is being introduced incrementally to The World Factbook; the entry provides a snapshot of the demographic features and trends within a country and how they vary among regional, ethnic, and socioeconomic sub-populations. Some of the topics addressed are population age structure, fertility, health, mortality, poverty, education, and migration. Countries introduced this week are those of Central and South America. - The "Refugees and internally displaced persons" field (in the Transnational Issues category) has been revised to reflect the latest available figures for each country. - The Transportation section has been updated for various West African, East African, South Asian, and Southeast Asian countries to reflect information on piracy incidents. The new information reflects a general decrease in the number of pirate attacks worldwide, especially in the waters off East Africa. The decrease in successful pirate attacks is due, in part, to more aggressive anti-piracy operations by international naval forces as well as the increased use of armed security teams aboard merchant ships.

December 12, 2012

- Content update - UI Improvements The World Factbook is adding a major new category. In light of the importance of the energy sector to the world's economy, The World Factbook has created a new Energy category. Some of the fields are based on the same entries used previously in the Economy category, but several contain entirely new data and definitions that have not previously appeared in The World Factbook. The fields for Electricity Flows (production, consumption, exports, and imports) remain the same as before, but there are now five new stock measures for Installed Electricity Generating Capacity, including total installed capacity (measured in kilowatts) and a percentage breakdown of the four main sources of that capacity: fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric plants, and renewable fuel sources, such as solar and wind. In the oil sector, former fields have been disaggregated to show separate numbers for crude oil (production, exports, imports, and proven reserves) and refined petroleum products (production, consumption, exports, and imports). The definitions for each of the five natural gas fields are identical to what had previously appeared in the Economy category. Finally, a new field for "Carbon dioxide emissions from consumption of energy" measures the total output of carbon dioxide from the consumption of all fuels. In total, the new category consists of 23 energy-related fields.