Surveys & Satellites: using QGIS to match satellite data with survey data

In this mini-course we will discuss simple methods to make use of geographic information in household survey data. Almost all household surveys cover at least some basic geographic variables such as the area of residence, which are rarely explicitly analysed in economic research. Yet, geographic variables can contain powerful information as prominently expressed in the first law of Geography: “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. Besides that, geographic information allows the researcher to append external data to household surveys that describe the environment in which the units of analysis are embedded. In this workshop, we will use QGIS to match satellite data with survey data. More specifically, we will merge satellite night-time light and rainfall data to a DHS data set based on GPS coordinates and district information.

Important note: Please bring your laptop with QGIS and Stata installed in advance. QGIS can be downloaded from https://www.qgis.org/en/site/ For those who do not have a laptop, please contact Herman to borrow one.