Nighttime satellite data acts as a proxy for economic activity. In view of COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on economic activity, the Urban Expansion Observatory along with MapDataLab analyzed daily night light data of 11 impacted cities around the globe. We used the Suomi National Polar-orbiting partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor which provides global daily night light measurements. We analyzed the daily VIIRS night light data from November 2019 to March 2020 and created a monthly average product after removing the moonlight illumination effects and by excluding imagery with excessive cloud cover. We created bounding box around each city which covers urban agglomeration and calculated a monthly average illumination for each city region. In most of the cities, we see dramatic fall in nighttime illumination in the month of March indicating severely depressed economic activity.

Study of 200 cities around the world

It presents maps and measures of the recent, as well as the long-term, expansion of cities having a population of 100,000 people along with information regarding its quality, the performance of the housing sector, and the state of regulatory regimes, the areas built between 1990 and 2019 in an easily accessible format. It also provides authoritative data, information, and advice on current and emerging urbanization trends and conditions of a stratified global sample of 200 cities.

UXO along with 100 Resilient Cities- Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation (100 RC) is helping the cities around the world to strengthen and increase their capacity to survive, face and grow in these challenges.

UXO helps in calculating temporal data of cities’ urban density for creating further planning policies. As a part of the process, building footprint, footprints of all the residential buildings and houses in the residential block (formal and informal) are studied.

UXO has performed the drone mapping process for various sites including Byculla site, a project for TCS having approximately 10 to 12 sites across Maharashtra and for an area where a university in Nashik is going to be built over an open space.

Caribbean island country named Grenada is experiencing sea-level rise which is affecting its significant area. UXO along with NYU has an opportunity to assist the local government regarding the urban development and planning the urban policy for the coming 30 years.

UXO facilitates the creation of interactive maps and applications which provides querying of the spatial information and helps in understanding the underlying pattern of the data. The applications can be customized according to the analysis requirements. We create desktop as well as mobile applications which can be hosted not only on public but also private servers. The data available on the application can be updated within seconds and can also provide 2D as well as 3D visualization of real-time information. Our application building process includes confirming the most efficient design for the application to meet the needs, developing the app and carrying out interrelated steps for deployment of the app and make it ready to use.