Integration and Development Hubs are multinational territories involving natural spaces, human settlements, production areas, and current trade flow. The Integration and Development Hubs are a territorial reference for the sustainable development of the region, which will facilitate access to areas with a high production potential that are currently isolated or underutilized due to the deficient provision of basic transport, energy, or communication services. In IIRSA identified 10 Integration and Development Hubs.

A group is a set of interdependent projects in a given space of the economic geography having synergetic effects upon sustainable development. That is, the grouping process is based on the possibility of capitalizing on the benefits of a set of investments, which are greater than the aggregate effects of its individual component projects (synergy). The process is territory-based and takes into account the location of projects, their relationships with the prevailing or potential economic activities, and the related environmental and social aspects.

Synergy is vertical when projects are grouped on the basis of input-output relations within a functional systemic chain (for example, port-road). It is horizontal when it refers to the use of common resources or ease of implementation or operation (hydroelectric power station-waterway). Consequently, the identification of synergies when setting up the project groups optimizes their benefits and favors the promotion of investments.

The effects of a project group are reflected in their strategic function, i.e. their common objective and main benefits for both the integration and the regional development of the territories involved. The strategic function has to do with the direct linkage of the project group to the specific territorial aspects of its area of influence and to the business vision of the pertinent Hub.

The Anchor Project which gives meaning to the grouping process and makes synergies viable. This project is no necessarily the largest-sized one, but the bottleneck or missing link in the infrastructure network that, as such, hinders the optimum use of the combined effects of the group for the sake of economic and social development. The Anchor Project may be a project already existing. In this case, it is called existing Anchor Project. Consequently, each group is formed around an anchor project or existing anchor project.

Hinge projects are projects that articulate two or more Integration and Development Hubs or that play a role in more than one Hub. For instance, a port located in the territory of two Hubs. In the horizontal Hub, they integrate the inland and coastal areas, and in the vertical Hub they integrate the Northern and Southern regions and vice versa.