Report on Nightlights…
Datasets mapped to individual constituencies across the state of Goa
Nightlights data report made available for each constituency
Data range from 2015 to 2020 onwards for a comprehensive state and constituency analysis for the assembly elections
Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: India Data Portal (IDP), from the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB) today released the ‘Night Lights’ data for Goa, available at Assembly Constituency level from 2015 to 2020.
Nightlights have become a reasonable indicator for GDP with a very high level of spatial granularity. The data released captures the comparison of the economic activity over the past 6 years covering 2015-2020. With Goa assembly elections to be held soon, the data will help analyse overall development and the role of economic development while people make choices at the ballot.
The report presents data and visualisations and provides pertinent insights into economic activity for all the assembly constituencies in Goa.
The three nightlight variables highlighted here include total radiance, change in total number of lit pixels and percentage change in lit pixels.
An increasing number of lit pixels suggests that economic activities are expanding to new areas, as previously dark pixels show radiance in satellite images. On the other hand, total radiance denotes increasing economic activity without saying anything about its distribution over space.
Speaking on the data release, Prof. Ashwini Chhatre | Executive Director – BIPP, Indian School of Business, said, “We are confident that the election data on IDP will act as a tool for many to analyse and map economic activity and development across constituencies with the way people respond.
The value of data-driven research is priceless as it helps understand factors that come into play during every election cycle. Being a supporter of open data, our team has been tirelessly working to bring all this data to one place and has worked on downscaling the datasets on the lowest possible spatial granularity to offer a format that can be easily accessed and used at ease. The available data will focus on crucial indicators focussing on economic development and the impact of development schemes and their progress.”
The data is available with Bharti Institute for Public Policy for research, and will further help to assess and track the development and progress with respect to various indicators, as mentioned below.
Detailed indicator level descriptions:
Night Lights: The variables are available Assembly constituency-wise. This reflects which areas have benefitted from development. These are indications for population, employment, per-capita consumption, and electrification. The variables here to mention some are:
Total number of lit pixels: this indicates the distribution of night lights in the assembly constituency area. This value over six years shows the growth or decline of economic activity in more detail than the total radiance. It will give an idea of how much area in the assembly constituency is lit.
Percentage of lit pixels: This is the percentage of the lit pixels with respect to total pixel
Total radiance: Total night light radiance in that assembly constituency
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