The methodology Cebr has utilised for the construction of the index is as follows:

Firstly, we collected a list of indicators which are important measures of growth potential, local skills and local infrastructure.

Upon collecting data on the indicators using a range of metrics, we scored each local authority/city based on its performance as measured by the particular indicator. For each indicator, the same steps were followed, allowing us to assign a value between 0 and 100 to each local authority/city:

In order to account for outliers, each data point is checked to determine if it falls outside of the mean +/- 2 standard deviations (s.d) range. If it does, the region is assigned a value equal to either mean + 2s.d or mean – 2s.d.

The min-max approach is used to assign an index value to each local authority/city. Specifically, the formula used is (data point – series min) / (series max – series min).

Once scores between 0 and 100 were assigned to each local authority/city within each indicator based on the previous steps, the indicators were weighted equally to calculate the overall pillar score, which then in turn were aggregated into the overall index score.

The sources for each of the indicators are as follows: