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World Fabric Research Charter

1. Mission​

World Fabric documents and analyses the material systems that enable globalization and the projects that transform them. Its empirical base is a global inventory of infrastructures, corridors and projects whose effects materially enable, expand, redirect, substitute, connect, coordinate or constrain international flows of goods, energy or data.

2. Research object​

World Fabric is not a catalogue alone. It links:

  • infrastructures and assets;
  • strategic corridors and functional links;
  • projects and modernization programmes;
  • flows and operating performance;
  • bottlenecks and dependencies;
  • documented system transformations.

The project deliberately avoids claiming to be a complete digital twin of the world economy.

3. Strategic levels​

Every included infrastructure or project receives one primary level:

  • L1 — Global structural: can materially affect global flows;
  • L2 — Macro-regional structural: shapes flows across a continent, basin or major economic system;
  • L3 — Strategic connector: a nationally located asset with significant international spillover.

Low economic value alone is never a reason for exclusion when the object performs a structurally important function.

4. Infrastructure families​

The global inventory covers:

  1. maritime;
  2. rail;
  3. road;
  4. inland waterways;
  5. intermodal logistics;
  6. air cargo;
  7. energy transport and transfer infrastructure;
  8. digital infrastructure;
  9. border and logistics coordination systems;
  10. strategic storage when it materially affects international logistics.

5. Epistemic doctrine​

Every material datum or assessment must distinguish:

  • observed — existence or occurrence in the real world;
  • expected — expectation attributed to an actor, contract, document or model;
  • scenario — hypothetical state used for stress testing or exploration.

Announced future capacity is never current capacity. Projected traffic is never observed traffic. Scenario output never contaminates the observed baseline.

6. Measurement doctrine​

World Fabric does not use a single primary corridor score. Scientific conclusions must be based on a multidimensional evidence table. Experimental composite indicators may be calculated only as secondary, decomposable estimates.

7. Project-impact doctrine​

A project is assessed through a short structured chain:

Project → Asset change → Functional-link change → Corridor metric change

Every material project assessment must also document adjacent constraints and counter-effects capable of limiting, delaying, displacing or neutralising the announced benefit.

8. Transformation doctrine​

A system transformation is not a headline or political narrative. A candidate becomes validated only when it shows significant change on at least two analytical dimensions, affects at least two segments or functional links, demonstrates persistence or substantial irreversible investment, includes operational evidence, considers major objections, and receives explicit human validation.

9. Traceability doctrine​

Every important statement is traceable.

Published analytical conclusions must be inspectable through their assessments, observations or structured facts, evidence items and sources. Missing evidence must be visible rather than hidden by prose.

10. Publication doctrine​

World Fabric is a stand-alone research project. English is canonical. The public observatory is delivered through Docusaurus and GitHub Pages. Ligne de Crête indexes and contextualises the research but is not a separate institutional sponsor or scientific authority.

11. Complexity rule​

The data model may remain compatible with future sophistication, but V1 implementation must remain narrow. New concepts or engines are added only when a demonstrated research failure requires them.