505 Economics: monthly luminosity data to measure economic activity and digital connectivity

505 Economics is on a mission to make academic economics accessible. We've created raw 'luminosity' measures for sub-national and national regions in Europe. This can be used to map electrical infrastructure, measure digital connection, or understand economic activity at a granular level. We produce the data using high-resolution night time satellite imagery and Artificial Intelligence. This builds on our academic research at the London School of Economics, and we're producing the dataset in collaboration with the European Space Agency BIC UK. We have published peer-reviewed academic articles on the usage of luminosity as an accurate proxy for economic activity. Key features: - Frequent: Data is provided every month from January 2015 - Timely: Data is provided with a three week lag (i.e. the data for January 2021 was published at the end of February 2021) - Accurate: We extensively clean the data (removing cloud cover, and non-electric sources of noise The dataset can be used by: - Governments and policy makers - to map electrical connectivity, and digital openness - Engineering companies - to map electrical infrastructure - Financial services and academia- to use luminosity as a proxy for GDP We have created this dataset for the UK, Switzerland and 24 EU Countries.