Geospatial Mapping of Community Level Electrification in Nigeria Using VIIRS Nighttime Light Data with Threshold Optimization and Ground Validation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63746/njtd.v23i3.4579Keywords:
Electrification planning, VIIRS Night-time Light, Geospatial analysis, Energy access, Sub-Saharan AfricaAbstract
Reliable and spatially detailed information on electricity access is essential for effective rural electrification planning in Nigeria; however, existing statistics are typically reported at aggregated administrative levels, thereby masking important community-scale disparities. This study develops a high-resolution, cluster-level electrification mapping framework for Nigeria using satellite-derived night-time light observations, integrated with a statistically optimized radiance threshold and field-based validation. The 2024 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) radiance data were processed and corrected for gas flaring using VIIRS Nightfire products, and were subsequently applied to 22,696 geospatially defined community clusters in Nigeria. Candidate radiance thresholds within the literature-supported range of 0.25-0.50 nW·cm?²·sr?¹ were systematically evaluated using a grid-search approach that maximized the F1-score, and electrification status was assigned through cluster-level sampling at the resulting optimal threshold. The classification was validated against a combined reference dataset comprising Rural Electrification Agency mini-grid records, field-verified unelectrified communities, and confirmed electrified sites, using confusion matrix-based performance measures. Classification performance was most balanced at a threshold of 0.35 nW·cm?²·sr?¹, giving a precision of 0.69, a recall of 0.86, and an F1-score of 0.77, with 79.45 percent of clusters classified as unelectrified. The study contributes an optimized threshold-selection framework, a Nigeria-specific gas-flare correction approach, and a high-resolution electrification dataset, supporting electrification planning and policy formulation.
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