Mapping urban living standards in developing countries with energy consumption data

Data deficits in developing countries impede evidence-based urban planning and policy, as well as fundamental research. We show that residential electricity consumption data can be used to partially address this challenge by serving as a proxy for relative living standards at the block or neighbourhood scale. We illustrate this potential by combining infrastructure and land use data from Open Street Map with georeferenced data from ~2 million residential electricity meters in the megacity of Karachi, Pakistan to map median electricity consumption at block level. Equivalent areal estimates of economic activity derived from high-resolution night lights data (VIIRS) are shown to be a poor predictor of intraurban variation in living standards by comparison. We argue that electricity data are an underutilised source of information that could be used to address empirical questions related to urban poverty and development at relatively high spatial and temporal resolution. Given near universal access to electricity in urban areas globally, this potential is significant