Contents

Welcome

Welcome to the World Bank’s Open Night Lights tutorial. We hope that this tutorial will help you better understand the power of remote sensing data as well as provide guidance on the tools to work with these data.

These tutorials use Jupyter notebooks, which allow them to combine written and visual content with executable code.

We will provide guidance on the software tools you’ll need to work with these tutorials. Only a very basic understanding of Python and a standard personal computer are required.

Tutorial organization

  • Module 1: Introduction to remote sensing

  • Module 2: Introduction to open source tools

  • Module 3: Basic operations on raster files

  • Module 4: Charting

  • Module 5: Data analysis and intercalibration

  • Module 6: Exercise on analyzing economic activity in Nepal

  • World Bank Light Every Night Archive: docs on accessing this new archive

  • Applications of nighttime lights: assessing the power grid with nighttime lights

References

Throughout the tutorial, technical terms and definitions are highlighted in blue. You can also find a full list of terms in the Glossary.
Links to helpful resources and documentation on tools are in green. You can also find a full list of resources in the Technical Resources section.
Occasionally you'll see a yellow box helping to navigate potential trouble-shooting issues.








Shield: CC BY 4.0

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

CC BY 4.0

1. Introduction to remote sensing (20 min)