Researchers Eleanor Stokes and Miguel Roman used NASA's Black Marble nighttime satellite data to study hundreds of urban areas across the Middle East during the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns and curfews, published in Scientific Reports. The study found that nighttime light changes often tracked when curfews and lockdowns began, reflecting reduced traffic and activity, but the pattern varied within and between countries, with conflict zones or areas of weak governance showing different signals. Because Ramadan fell around the same time, the researchers used prior years' Ramadan light patterns as a baseline to separate the pandemic's effect from the holiday's normal dip in activity.
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The study covers roughly the year 2022 in terms of when it was published or analyzed, per the transcript's opening reference.
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The hosts note that this kind of baseline-and-deviation approach, comparing normal Ramadan patterns to Ramadan-plus-pandemic patterns, could have value for analyzing other events in the same dataset later.
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1:08:14three which is 2022. >> This is Eleanor Stokes and Miguel Roman. This is in scientific reports here. rather than a hurricane cutting power, we've got governments that impose restrictions and people are altered because of the first months of CO 19, the pandemic. And the paper examines hundreds of urban areas across the Middle East um using this black marble observations over several years. And it's it's I think an incredible paper. The the study actually found that nightlights often captured the onset of curfews and lockdowns. I was literally just thinking like, oh, when the curfew started, it probably lit up.
1:08:54>> Yeah. >> Or no. Uh, yeah. Lit up. Yeah. >> Yeah. Because people were >> Yeah. They were at home. Yeah. And the response varied within and between countries, but it was a little more nuanced because even when the curfew started, that means there's less traffic lights. >> So, you know, it's it's a bit more complicated than that. Um, so in places that were a affected by conflict or weak governance, the patterns could be very very different. M >> and the authors also considered Ramadan which happened around the same time which provided a stringent list. We need like a familiar annual change of social activity which we've observed in other >> years right cuz you've got this backlog of activity. So you know what a normal
1:09:35Ramadan looks like in these Muslim countries and then you can say okay what is Ramadan plus CO look like in these Muslim countries. I imagine that's going to be a valuable also co the co data set will have similar baseline value for other questions later. >> Yeah. >> Um Oh that's >> Yeah, I think it's it's a really cool way to do like >> data science in general, right? is like because there's a natural oscillation and a natural rhythm to human life in these areas and you have a record of that from the previous data and now all of a sudden you've introduced the co9 pandemic how does that affect right >> mhm
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