{
  "name": "Warconomy data needs backlog",
  "asOf": "2026-06-05",
  "note": "A static, honest backlog of data Warconomy would add once a properly citable public source exists. Each item is gated on source quality: no value is asserted here, and items requiring paywalled or non-authoritative sources stay blocked rather than guessed.",
  "page": "https://warconomy.com/data-needs",
  "summary": {
    "total": 10,
    "newTopics": 1,
    "newObservations": 3,
    "newSeries": 2,
    "refreshes": 4,
    "highRisk": 3,
    "mediumRisk": 5,
    "lowRisk": 2
  },
  "coverageDepthPlan": {
    "note": "Per-session coverage-depth triage. No value is added unless directly verified from an authoritative source; otherwise the gate stands and the item is documented here. Static, not real-time.",
    "doc": "docs/coverage-depth-plan.md",
    "candidates": [],
    "attempted": [
      {
        "id": "wheat-fertilizer-gas",
        "title": "Wheat, fertilizer & natural-gas price benchmarks",
        "category": "commodities",
        "requiredSourceType": "Official/intergovernmental price series (e.g. World Bank Pink Sheet, FAO)",
        "gate": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. The World Bank Commodity Markets page states only index % changes (e.g. energy index −5.4% in May), not the exact USD/mt or USD/mmbtu benchmark levels; the actual values are published only in the downloadable 'Pink Sheet' XLSX/PDF (binary, not directly-readable HTML). Adding a value would require parsing a binary file — out of bounds (no chart-only/binary-only values). Gate stands: needs the exact cell values in a directly-readable form.",
        "relatedPath": "/commodities/dashboard"
      },
      {
        "id": "sipri-nato-deepening",
        "title": "Deeper SIPRI / NATO defense-spending coverage",
        "category": "defense",
        "requiredSourceType": "SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; NATO defence-expenditure releases",
        "gate": "APPLIED 2026-06-09 (v1.187.0). VERIFIED against SIPRI's 2025 press release (same release as the existing top-3; it restates US $954bn, China $336bn, Russia $190bn) and added as live country-military-expenditure observations on the same basis (levels in US$, real-terms % changes): Germany $114bn (+24%), India $92.1bn (+8.9%), UK $89.0bn (-2.0%), Ukraine $84.1bn (+20%), Saudi Arabia $83.2bn (+1.4%), France $68.0bn (+1.5%), Japan $62.2bn (+9.7%). Applied after the provenance system was reworked to derive each version's provenance from its own frozen payload, so this first record-additive release keeps prior versions' provenance available. Live observations 47 → 54.",
        "relatedPath": "/defense"
      },
      {
        "id": "suez-refresh",
        "title": "Suez Canal transit refresh",
        "category": "chokepoints",
        "requiredSourceType": "Suez Canal Authority / official transit statistics",
        "gate": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. UNCTAD's Review of Maritime Transport page returns HTTP 403 to direct access; the Suez Canal Authority publishes navigation statistics only via downloadable PDF reports (binary, not directly stated on an accessible HTML page); container freight indices are paywalled. No newer authoritative, directly-transcribable figure was obtainable. The existing UNCTAD Feb-2024 rapid-assessment values (-42% transits, -67% container transits) remain cited and clearly dated. Gate stands: needs a directly-readable official figure.",
        "relatedPath": "/chokepoints/dashboard"
      },
      {
        "id": "crea-next-period",
        "title": "CREA Russian fossil-fuel export tracker — next period",
        "category": "sanctions",
        "requiredSourceType": "CREA (research; medium confidence)",
        "gate": "Attempted 2026-06-09: CREA's latest published monthly analysis is still April 2026 (EUR 734 mn/day, +4% m/m; the April post was published 2026-06-01). The April figure was re-verified against the official CREA page and remains correct. No next-period (May 2026) analysis is published yet — CREA publishes ~6 weeks in arrears — so there is no new value to append. WAITING FOR NEXT MONTHLY ANALYSIS: the refresh path is documented at /methodology/refresh-harness (candidate crea-may-2026) — read the headline EUR mn/day figure + m/m change once the May 2026 page is live, then follow /methodology/promote-data-need to append it (obs-sanctions-export-revenue, source crea-russia-fossil-tracker). Low risk, human-transcribable.",
        "relatedPath": "/sanctions/russia-energy-trade/economic-impact"
      },
      {
        "id": "ofac-eu-vessel-refresh",
        "title": "OFAC / EU sanctioned-vessel list refresh",
        "category": "sanctions",
        "requiredSourceType": "OFAC SDN / EU consolidated list (official)",
        "gate": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked / no new data. The existing EU cumulative count (632 vessels, 20th package, 23 April 2026) was re-verified against the official EU press release and remains correct (the page states '632 vessels ... now listed', +46/-11). No 21st EU package (or newer cumulative total) is evident as of 2026-06-09 — the 20th package is still the latest. OFAC publishes single-action designations, not a derivable cumulative shadow-fleet total, and deriving one requires parsing the large binary SDN list (out of bounds: no scraping). Gate stands until the next EU package.",
        "relatedPath": "/sanctions/dashboard"
      },
      {
        "id": "grain-volumes",
        "title": "Black Sea grain export volumes",
        "category": "commodities",
        "requiredSourceType": "UN/FAO or official corridor statistics",
        "gate": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. The UN Black Sea Grain Initiative ended in 2023; current Ukraine grain-corridor export tonnage is published in reports/dashboards (PDF/interactive), not as a directly-stated exact monthly figure in accessible HTML from an official/intergovernmental source. No cleanly-transcribable value was obtainable, so the existing sample row is not promoted (no fabrication). Gate stands: needs an official monthly tonnage series in a directly-readable form.",
        "relatedPath": "/conflicts/russia-ukraine/economic-impact"
      }
    ],
    "blocked": [
      {
        "id": "ttf-jkm-gas",
        "title": "TTF and JKM gas benchmarks",
        "category": "commodities",
        "requiredSourceType": "Official exchange/regulator data or a free, attributable index",
        "gate": "Out of scope this session: authoritative TTF/JKM levels are paywalled; no free official source of record. Stays blocked.",
        "relatedPath": "/commodities/oil-benchmarks/economic-impact"
      },
      {
        "id": "red-sea-freight-open",
        "title": "Openly-citable Red Sea freight-rate index",
        "category": "chokepoints",
        "requiredSourceType": "A free, attributable index (e.g. a public UNCTAD figure)",
        "gate": "Out of scope this session: container freight-rate indices are paywalled; no free, attributable source of record. Stays blocked.",
        "relatedPath": "/chokepoints/red-sea-shipping/economic-impact"
      }
    ],
    "deferred": [
      {
        "id": "gaza-syria-reconstruction",
        "title": "Gaza and Syria reconstruction cost estimates",
        "category": "conflicts",
        "requiredSourceType": "UN/World Bank rapid damage & needs assessments (RDNA-style)",
        "gate": "Deferred: new-topic work, out of this coverage-depth session's refresh scope.",
        "relatedPath": "/reconstruction"
      },
      {
        "id": "ukraine-rdna-successor",
        "title": "Ukraine RDNA successor assessment",
        "category": "conflicts",
        "requiredSourceType": "World Bank / Ukraine government RDNA series",
        "gate": "Deferred: the current RDNA4 estimate stands until the next official RDNA edition is published; no superseding assessment to cite yet.",
        "relatedPath": "/conflicts/russia-ukraine/economic-impact"
      }
    ]
  },
  "needs": [
    {
      "id": "wheat-fertilizer-gas",
      "title": "Wheat, fertilizer & natural-gas price benchmarks",
      "category": "commodities",
      "desiredMetric": "Benchmark prices for wheat, nitrogen fertilizer, and European gas",
      "requiredSourceType": "Official/intergovernmental price series (e.g. World Bank Pink Sheet, FAO)",
      "kind": "new-series",
      "whyBlocked": "Needs an openly published, non-paywalled benchmark series with a stable as-of cadence before any value can be cited.",
      "risk": "medium",
      "relatedPath": "/commodities/dashboard",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. The World Bank Commodity Markets page states only index % changes (e.g. energy index −5.4% in May), not the exact USD/mt or USD/mmbtu benchmark levels; the actual values are published only in the downloadable 'Pink Sheet' XLSX/PDF (binary, not directly-readable HTML). Adding a value would require parsing a binary file — out of bounds (no chart-only/binary-only values). Gate stands: needs the exact cell values in a directly-readable form."
    },
    {
      "id": "ttf-jkm-gas",
      "title": "TTF and JKM gas benchmarks",
      "category": "commodities",
      "desiredMetric": "European TTF and Asian JKM natural-gas benchmark levels",
      "requiredSourceType": "Official exchange/regulator data or a free, attributable index",
      "kind": "new-observation",
      "whyBlocked": "The most-cited TTF/JKM levels sit behind paywalled market data; no free source of record confirmed yet.",
      "risk": "high",
      "relatedPath": "/commodities/oil-benchmarks/economic-impact",
      "coverageStatus": "blocked",
      "coverageNote": "Out of scope this session: authoritative TTF/JKM levels are paywalled; no free official source of record. Stays blocked."
    },
    {
      "id": "gaza-syria-reconstruction",
      "title": "Gaza and Syria reconstruction cost estimates",
      "category": "conflicts",
      "desiredMetric": "Reconstruction/damage cost estimates",
      "requiredSourceType": "UN/World Bank rapid damage & needs assessments (RDNA-style)",
      "kind": "new-topic",
      "whyBlocked": "Awaiting an authoritative, published assessment to cite; figures must be clearly dated and attributed, not aggregated from news.",
      "risk": "high",
      "relatedPath": "/reconstruction",
      "coverageStatus": "deferred",
      "coverageNote": "Deferred: new-topic work, out of this coverage-depth session's refresh scope."
    },
    {
      "id": "sipri-nato-deepening",
      "title": "Deeper SIPRI / NATO defense-spending coverage",
      "category": "defense",
      "desiredMetric": "More countries and a longer time series of military expenditure",
      "requiredSourceType": "SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; NATO defence-expenditure releases",
      "kind": "new-series",
      "whyBlocked": "Expansion is straightforward but each country-year must be transcribed and dated from the official release; not yet done.",
      "risk": "low",
      "relatedPath": "/defense",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "APPLIED 2026-06-09 (v1.187.0). VERIFIED against SIPRI's 2025 press release (same release as the existing top-3; it restates US $954bn, China $336bn, Russia $190bn) and added as live country-military-expenditure observations on the same basis (levels in US$, real-terms % changes): Germany $114bn (+24%), India $92.1bn (+8.9%), UK $89.0bn (-2.0%), Ukraine $84.1bn (+20%), Saudi Arabia $83.2bn (+1.4%), France $68.0bn (+1.5%), Japan $62.2bn (+9.7%). Applied after the provenance system was reworked to derive each version's provenance from its own frozen payload, so this first record-additive release keeps prior versions' provenance available. Live observations 47 → 54."
    },
    {
      "id": "suez-refresh",
      "title": "Suez Canal transit refresh",
      "category": "chokepoints",
      "desiredMetric": "Latest Suez transit counts / tonnage",
      "requiredSourceType": "Suez Canal Authority / official transit statistics",
      "kind": "refresh",
      "whyBlocked": "Existing values need re-verification against the latest official release before the as-of date can move forward.",
      "risk": "medium",
      "relatedPath": "/chokepoints/dashboard",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. UNCTAD's Review of Maritime Transport page returns HTTP 403 to direct access; the Suez Canal Authority publishes navigation statistics only via downloadable PDF reports (binary, not directly stated on an accessible HTML page); container freight indices are paywalled. No newer authoritative, directly-transcribable figure was obtainable. The existing UNCTAD Feb-2024 rapid-assessment values (-42% transits, -67% container transits) remain cited and clearly dated. Gate stands: needs a directly-readable official figure."
    },
    {
      "id": "crea-next-period",
      "title": "CREA Russian fossil-fuel export tracker — next period",
      "category": "sanctions",
      "desiredMetric": "Latest CREA monthly export-revenue figures",
      "requiredSourceType": "CREA (research; medium confidence)",
      "kind": "refresh",
      "whyBlocked": "Recurring refresh: append the next published month and update the as-of/last-reviewed dates.",
      "risk": "low",
      "relatedPath": "/sanctions/russia-energy-trade/economic-impact",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "Attempted 2026-06-09: CREA's latest published monthly analysis is still April 2026 (EUR 734 mn/day, +4% m/m; the April post was published 2026-06-01). The April figure was re-verified against the official CREA page and remains correct. No next-period (May 2026) analysis is published yet — CREA publishes ~6 weeks in arrears — so there is no new value to append. WAITING FOR NEXT MONTHLY ANALYSIS: the refresh path is documented at /methodology/refresh-harness (candidate crea-may-2026) — read the headline EUR mn/day figure + m/m change once the May 2026 page is live, then follow /methodology/promote-data-need to append it (obs-sanctions-export-revenue, source crea-russia-fossil-tracker). Low risk, human-transcribable."
    },
    {
      "id": "ofac-eu-vessel-refresh",
      "title": "OFAC / EU sanctioned-vessel list refresh",
      "category": "sanctions",
      "desiredMetric": "Count of designated shadow-fleet vessels",
      "requiredSourceType": "OFAC SDN / EU consolidated list (official)",
      "kind": "refresh",
      "whyBlocked": "Designations change frequently; the count must be re-derived from the official list with a fresh accessed date.",
      "risk": "medium",
      "relatedPath": "/sanctions/dashboard",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked / no new data. The existing EU cumulative count (632 vessels, 20th package, 23 April 2026) was re-verified against the official EU press release and remains correct (the page states '632 vessels ... now listed', +46/-11). No 21st EU package (or newer cumulative total) is evident as of 2026-06-09 — the 20th package is still the latest. OFAC publishes single-action designations, not a derivable cumulative shadow-fleet total, and deriving one requires parsing the large binary SDN list (out of bounds: no scraping). Gate stands until the next EU package."
    },
    {
      "id": "ukraine-rdna-successor",
      "title": "Ukraine RDNA successor assessment",
      "category": "conflicts",
      "desiredMetric": "Updated reconstruction & recovery needs",
      "requiredSourceType": "World Bank / Ukraine government RDNA series",
      "kind": "refresh",
      "whyBlocked": "Awaiting the next published RDNA edition to supersede the current dated estimate.",
      "risk": "medium",
      "relatedPath": "/conflicts/russia-ukraine/economic-impact",
      "coverageStatus": "deferred",
      "coverageNote": "Deferred: the current RDNA4 estimate stands until the next official RDNA edition is published; no superseding assessment to cite yet."
    },
    {
      "id": "red-sea-freight-open",
      "title": "Openly-citable Red Sea freight-rate index",
      "category": "chokepoints",
      "desiredMetric": "Container freight-rate level on affected lanes",
      "requiredSourceType": "A free, attributable index (e.g. a public UNCTAD figure)",
      "kind": "new-observation",
      "whyBlocked": "Most freight indices are paywalled; replacing the current sample needs a non-paywalled source of record.",
      "risk": "high",
      "relatedPath": "/chokepoints/red-sea-shipping/economic-impact",
      "coverageStatus": "blocked",
      "coverageNote": "Out of scope this session: container freight-rate indices are paywalled; no free, attributable source of record. Stays blocked."
    },
    {
      "id": "grain-volumes",
      "title": "Black Sea grain export volumes",
      "category": "commodities",
      "desiredMetric": "Monthly grain export tonnage",
      "requiredSourceType": "UN/FAO or official corridor statistics",
      "kind": "new-observation",
      "whyBlocked": "Needs an official volume series to promote the current sample row to a live observation.",
      "risk": "medium",
      "relatedPath": "/conflicts/russia-ukraine/economic-impact",
      "coverageStatus": "attempted",
      "coverageNote": "Attempted 2026-06-09 — blocked. The UN Black Sea Grain Initiative ended in 2023; current Ukraine grain-corridor export tonnage is published in reports/dashboards (PDF/interactive), not as a directly-stated exact monthly figure in accessible HTML from an official/intergovernmental source. No cleanly-transcribable value was obtainable, so the existing sample row is not promoted (no fabrication). Gate stands: needs an official monthly tonnage series in a directly-readable form."
    }
  ]
}