Early Warning System: Version 2

Results map
Client:   International Accountability Project

Tracking the activities of more than a dozen of global development banks is a tough job, especially for grassroots activists looking to connect the dots between projects across sectors and continents. The International Accountability Project created the Early Warning System (EWS) to harvest project information from the websites of ten Multinational Development Banks such as the World Bank, International Funding Corporation, and Inter-Asian Development Bank, to collect the data into a unified format provide a streamlined and intuitive search interface.


Using the EWS, activists are notified of new projects when they are disclosed by the funding banks, and may evaluate the project details,  and supplemental documents to determine whether human rights may be at risk and whether action should be taken.

GreenInfo built the original EWS in 2012, and in 2016 was entirely overhauled. The 2016-2017 edition of the EWS supports multiple reviewers and managers on the back-end for reviewing and publishing projects to the site, brought reliability improvements to the "scrapers" which harvest data from the bank websites, and provides a simplified and streamlined search and map interface.

  • Purpose-built scrapers analyze project disclosures from ten multinational development banks, storing the project details into a unified database structure.
  • Reviewers use the administration back-end to fill in additional project details, to fill in their evaluation of whether the project or its participating corporations are at risk of violating human rights should the project move forward. If appropriate, the project is published to the website.
  • A powerful but simple search interface and map interface, allows interested parties to search for projects by sector of expertise, countries impacted, and more.
  • A series of RSS feeds allows people to "subscribe" to project listings for individual countries or regions, sectors, or funding banks so they can be informed automatically when new projects are published.
As of April 2017, 573 verified projects are available for public searching, spanning 115 countries and 13 international funding banks. New projects are found every day.  A team reviews each project and supports local campaigns by passing information on to communities and activists likely to be impacted.

Focus:   Conservation, Economic Development, Environment, Social Justice/Equity  

Services:  Interactive Solutions, Applications Development, Web Mapping 

Project Years: 2016-2019

GreenInfo Network creates, analyzes, visualizes and communicates information in the public interest. We specialize in mapping and related technology for nonprofits and public agencies, focusing on using it for conservation, social equity, public health, environment and foundation grant making.
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