EO-Driven Multi-Objective Microgrid Siting for Rural Electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Cloud-Based AI Framework with Application to Sierra Leone
# EO-Driven Multi-Objective Microgrid Siting — Sierra Leone
**Pre-proposal analysis notebook for the ESA African Research Fellowship 2026**
> *Theme: Energy and Natural Resource Management — EO AFRICA Initiative*
---
## Overview
This repository contains the analysis notebook and supporting materials for a proposed
ESA African Research Fellowship (ARF 2026) project that fuses multi-source satellite
Earth Observation data into a multi-objective MILP optimiser to rank candidate
solar microgrid sites for rural electrification in Sierra Leone.
**Core research question:**
*Can a cloud-native EO-AI pipeline replace costly field surveys and produce
decision-ready, ranked microgrid siting recommendations with uncertainty quantification?*
---
## Proposal Figures
| Figure | Title | Data source |
|--------|-------|-------------|
| Fig 1 | The Challenge — Sierra Leone Energy Access Gap | World Bank WDI |
| Fig 2 | The Opportunity — Solar Resource & Priority Zones | PVGIS v5.2 JRC + VIIRS NTL |
| Fig 3 | The Approach — EO-AI Methodology Pipeline | Conceptual |
| Fig 4 | The Plan — 12-Month Work Plan (ESRIN Fellowship) | Proposed |
---
## EO Data Stack
| Satellite | Product | Resolution | Role |
|-----------|---------|------------|------|
| Sentinel-2 MSI | Level-2A | 10 m | Settlement & land-cover mapping |
| Sentinel-1 SAR | GRD | 10 m | Flood risk & terrain roughness |
| VIIRS DNB | NTL annual composite | 500 m | Electrification proxy & demand model |
| PVGIS / CAMS | Solar irradiance TS | 5 km | PV yield estimation |
| ERA5 | Climate reanalysis | 31 km | Demand-side temperature/wind model |
| WorldPop | Population grid | 100 m | Demand proxy |
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## Repository Structure
```
.
├── eo_microgrid_sierraleone.ipynb # Main analysis notebook (31 cells)
├── results/
│ ├── data/ # Processed CSVs
│ └── reports/ # Key statistics & facts
├── EO.docx # Research framing notes
└── README.md
```
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## …