Econometrics and National Development from Satellite Data

Goal: The objective of this study is to utilize accessible satellite data to create proxy variables for economic data that are usually time-consuming and costly to collect, especially in the Philippines.

This will serve as a repository for various data products/projects and will regularly be updated as new proxy variables are gathered.

Credits/Data Sources:

• Philippine Statistices Authority
• Earth Observation Group, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center
• U.S. Agency for International Development
• Glboal Administrative Areas by Robert Hijmans
• Open StreetMap

For questions and bug reports, please email Aldre Jota at aldrejota[at]gmail.com.

Project 1: Nightlight Intensity for Consumption-based and Asset-based Wealth

• Purpose: Study the correlation of nightlights with the wealth of a population
• Directory: ./nightlights
• Programming Language: R version 3.3.2 (should also work for newer versions)
• Required Packages: rgdal, rgeos, raster, magrittr, foreign, plyr, dplyr, ggplot2, GGally, broom

Linear Regression of Nightlight Intensity Values in a Cluster to Wealth Score:

Wealth	Year	Clusters	Adjusted R2
Asset-based	2003	816	0.5015
Asset-based	2008	789	0.5321
Consumption	2009	97	0.7993
Consumption	2012	97	0.8758

Related: Chen & Nordhaus, 2011, Using luminosity data as a proxy for economic statistics [Arxiv]

Instructions for Replication

1. Populate data/input/ folder with the following:
   • Nightlights Data from NGDC
   • USAID Demographic Health Surveys on Philippines
   • Philippine Statistics Authority data on Income and Expenditure
   • Shapefiles or Polygons of each cluster/province/municipality: PhilGIS or OpenStreetMap
2. Run the scripts in the following order (💰 - Asset or Consumption):
   • 💰_ExtractData.R
   • 💰_FeatureGenerator.R
   • 💰_Visualization+Regression.R
3. Cross-check your output with the provided output data and figures.

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Project 2: Nightlight Intensity on Effects of War (Marawi)

• Purpose: Assess effects of war on electrification and displacement of population
• Directory: ./nightlights
• Programming Language: R version 3.4.1 (should also work for newer versions)
• Required Packages: rgdal, rgeos, raster, magrittr, foreign, ggplot2, GGally, RColorBrewer

Instructions for Replication

1. Download 2017 Nightlights Data here.
2. Download Marawi City Shapefile from here.
3. Run the script: MarawiAnalysis.R to generate figures.

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Project 3: TBA