A clear photograph of the Earth at night is remarkable on its face. More profound still is the realization that these points of light yield insights into the activities of human civilization unfolding below. Researchers have explored these insights for decades — first through the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS), and more recently through the Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Day/Night Band (VIIRS-DNB).
Nighttime-lights data from these satellites have opened entire avenues of research because of their global coverage and sensitivity to temporal dynamics. Examples include research into economic activity (Donaldson & Storeygard, 2016; Henderson et al., 2018), socioeconomic trends (Proville et al., 2017), natural disasters (Qiang et al., 2020), impact evaluation, and even the impacts of COVID-19. Unfortunately, although these data are collected daily, they've mostly been available only through monthly or yearly composites.
Now, for the first time, an entire archive of data from both the DMSP-OLS (1992–2017) and VIIRS-DNB (2012–present) systems is available for every night. The collection spans three decades. New Light Technologies (NLT) is proud to assist this project and provide technical guidance for accessing and analyzing the data.
World Bank — Light Every Night
The World Bank Group, in partnership with the University of Michigan and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and with support from NLT, has launched the World Bank – Light Every Night archive. The dataset is published on the AWS Registry of Open Data and is designed from the ground up to be Analysis Ready. The archive includes nighttime-lights imagery for DMSP-OLS and VIIRS-DNB and supplemental data-quality layers for masking cloud coverage, lunar illuminance, and stray light, among other artifacts. More details are available on the technical documentation page.
This launch represents years of work to make the archive publicly available, and is the start of more resources for accessing and analyzing these data. One of those is the World Bank Open Nighttime Lights tutorial, developed by NLT in collaboration with NOAA, the University of Michigan, and NLT's Chief Scientist.
Engaging the public with technical guidance
NLT has long advocated for open data and the power of remote sensing to drive research. We recognize, however, that just because datasets are publicly open does not mean there is no cost in the time and expertise needed to convert them into meaningful information — expertise not always available to everyone, particularly in developing countries or immediately following disasters, where such data can yield critical information.
We developed the World Bank Open Nighttime Lights tutorial as a hands-on way to reduce these barriers and demystify nighttime-lights data for people who may think using them requires specialty experience (it does not). The tutorial covers fundamental concepts for accessing open satellite data and is aimed at a broad audience, with the goal of putting these data — and the power of their insights — in the hands of as many practitioners as possible.
In addition to the fundamentals for accessing and visualizing the data, there are modules dedicated to cleaning data for analysis, creating plots, executing conditional operations and band math, simple compositing, zonal statistics, and time-series and comparative analysis.
In December 2020, we hosted a day-long workshop with this tutorial as part of the 3rd Annual Geo4Dev Symposium and Workshop. We hope this tutorial and the many excellent presentations from that week, along with the World Bank's "Light Every Night" data archive, will have an immediate impact around the world.
We are also engaged in a variety of advanced research projects and applications using data science and machine learning to better understand our world, solve problems, and drive missions forward for our clients and partners. There is more to come as we develop tools and resources so that nighttime-lights analysis can inspire and instruct an ever-growing community of analysts, researchers, and curious minds.
This project and data were made possible by the World Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB).
About New Light Technologies
New Light Technologies (NLT) is a Washington, DC-based firm with 25+ years of experience delivering:
- Geospatial systems and enterprise GIS
- Cloud-native data platforms
- AI/ML and advanced analytics
- DevSecOps and cybersecurity solutions
NLT supports federal, state, and international organizations in operationalizing data for mission impact.