Spatial data development: case of night lights in districts of uttar pradesh

Abstract

This paper introduces spatial analysis for economic and other forms of analysis to beginners and introductory researchers, with the scope of inclusion of such datasets in their existing research. The paper serves as a guide for such researchers looking to curate spatial data sets and analyze the same. The paper establishes a foundation for the relevance of spatial data, especially nighttime lights data and then guides readers through a comprehensive methodology to curate, clean and analyze such a dataset. Since spatial data is vast and varied, this particular tutorial is for the Nighttime lights of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India and uses programming and visualization tools QGIS and Julia for the same. Finally, the paper also provides essential links to download the relevant data, and lays the premise of how the final dataset can be analyzed and visualized, while providing some potential application for the same. The techniques and codes provided in this guide in no way serve as a comprehensive guide to spatial data analysis, but do outline some of the basic types and forms of spatial data, and elicit the key components of the same, which can be used for the curation of a very basic form of a spatial dataset.