Geospatial Nightlight Dataset for Sub-districts of India

Geospatial data have become a valuable asset in the 21st century with its applications in almost everyday life and an overriding scope in the field of research. One such growing spatial data is the remotely sensed nighttime lights (NTL) imagery, which simply is a depiction of human activities around the globe at night. It may be a stunning visual to many yet the valuable insights it provides in measuring a number of parameters like population, poverty, electrification, migration, disaster, health, fishing, fires, GDP, pollution, urbanization, settlement, etc. have made researchers and scientists look up to this data to validate and evaluate socio-economic and other indicators independently and concurrently. Apart from using as a proxy in many researches, NTL allows to track statistics of region where data is often not collected or is not reliable. It has potential applications for policy makers and government in the decision making processes. Nighttime lights were in used since the mid 1990's and are publicly made available from 1992 onwards through the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) provided by National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A more advance system called Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day Night band (DNB) replaces DMSP system. The extraction provided uses VIIRS monthly aggregates with spatial polygon units of India at sub-districts level. The monthly raw dataset is available from April 2012 onwards. This extraction cover 141 months till December 2023. The primary intent is to disseminate the dataset to a larger audience, be it researcher or policy analyst and planners. The broader objective is to keep on updating the data continuously.