GaelKBertrand/rwanda-firm-activity

Building a firm activity proxy using satellite light intensity to approximate: economic activity, firm clustering, regional productivity # Rwanda Firm Activity Tracker **Purpose:** Construct firm-level proxies for economic activity using satellite nightlights and OpenStreetMap data # Measuring Commercial Informality in Kigali Using OpenStreetMap and Satellite Data **Status:** Research in Progress --- ## Introduction This project constructs a spatially explicit, time‑varying measure of commercial informality in Kigali, Rwanda. It combines **OpenStreetMap (OSM, a biased and incomplete map of formal businesses) with **VIIRS nightlights** and **Sentinel‑2 NDBI** (built‑up index), once can infer areas where economic activity is high but formal firm representation is low. The output is a 500m grid‑level panel dataset (2015–2024) containing satellite‑derived economic intensity, OSM firm counts, expected firm counts (using Poisson regression), and a coverage ratio. The informality signal is validated against the **World Bank Enterprise Survey** and a manual sample of grid cells. This work provides a low‑cost, replicable tool for monitoring commercial development hot nodes and targeting policy interventions in data‑poor urban environments. --- ## Questions 1. **Primary:** To what extent does OpenStreetMap under‑represent commercial activity in Kigali, and where is this under‑representation most severe? 2. **Secondary:** How has the spatial pattern of satellite‑derived economic activity (nightlights + NDBI) evolved in Kigali from 2015 to 2024? 3. **Tertiary:** Can we identify distinct commercial clusters based on the co‑location of formal activity (OSM) and satellite‑inferred informal activity? --- ## Conceptual Framework - **Economic Geography:** Formal firms (licensed, larger, more visible) are more likely to appear in OSM. Informal firms (small vendors, home‑based workshops, unregistered small shops) are underrepresented. - **Satellite Proxies:** VIIRS nightlights correlate with electricity consumption and nighttime economic activity. Sentinel‑2 NDBI (Normalized Difference Built‑up Index) captur …