The Earth Observations Group (EOG) is producing a version 1 suite of average radiance composite images using nighttime data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB). Prior to averaging, the DNB data is filtered to exclude data impacted by stray light, lightning, lunar illumination, and cloud-cover. Cloud-cover is determined using the VIIRS Cloud Mask product (VCM). In addition, data near the edges of the swath are not included in the composites (aggregation zones 29-32). Temporal averaging is done on a monthly and annual basis. The version 1 series of monthly composites has not been filtered to screen out lights from aurora, fires, boats, and other temporal lights. However, the annual composites have layers with additional separation, removing temporal lights and background (non-light) values. The version 1 products span the globe from 75N latitude to 65S. The products are produced in 15 arc-second geographic grids and are made available in geotiff format as a set of 6 tiles. The tiles are cut at the equator and each span 120 degrees of latitude. Each tile is actually a set of images containing average radiance values and numbers of available observations. In the monthly composites, there are many areas of the globe where it is impossible to get good quality data coverage for that month. This can be due to cloud-cover, especially in the tropical regions, or due to solar illumination, as happens toward the poles in their respective summer months. Therefore, it is imperative that users of these data utilize the cloud-free observations file and not assume a value of zero in the average radiance image means that no lights were observed. The version 1 monthly series is run globally using two different configurations. The first excludes any data impacted by stray light. The second includes these data if the radiance vales have undergone the stray-light correction procedure (Reference). These two configurations are denoted in the filenames as "vcm" and "vcmsl" respectively. The "vcmsl" version, that includes the stray-light corrected data, will have more data coverage toward the poles, but will be of reduced quality. It is up to the users to determine which set is best for their applications. The annual versions are only made with the “vcm” version, excluding any data impacted by stray light. Filenaming convention: The version 1 composite products have 7 filename fields that are separated by an underscore "_". Internal to each field there can be an additional dash separator "-". These fields are followed by a filename extension. The fields are described below using this example filename: SVDNB_npp_20140501-20140531_global_vcmcfg_v10_c201502061154.avg_rade9 Field 1: VIIRS SDR or Product that made the composite "SVDNB" Field 2: satellite name "npp" Field 3: date range "20140501-20140531" Field 4: ROI "global" Field 5: config shortname "vcmcfg" Field 6: version "v10" is version 1.0 Field 7: creation date/time Extension: avg_rade9 The annual products can have other values for the config shortname (Field 5). They are: "vcm-orm" (VIIRS Cloud Mask - Outlier Removed) This product contains cloud-free average radiance values that have undergone an outlier removal process to filter out fires and other ephemeral lights. "vcm-orm-ntl" (VIIRS Cloud Mask - Outlier Removed - Nighttime Lights) This product contains the "vcm-orm" average, with background (non-lights) set to zero. "vcm-ntl" (VIIRS Cloud Mask - Nighttime Lights) This product contains the "vcm" average, with background (non-lights) set to zero. Data types/formats: To reach the widest community of users, files are delivered in compressed tarballs, each containing a set of 2 geotiffs. Files with extensions "avg_rade9" contain floating point radiance values with units in nanoWatts/cm2/sr. Note that the original DNB radiance values have been multiplied by 1E9. This was done to alleviate issues some software packages were having with the very small numbers in the original units. Files with extension "cf_cvg" are integer counts of the number of cloud-free coverages, or observations, that went in to constructing the average radiance image. Files with extension “cvg” are integer counts of the number of coverages or total observations available (regardless of cloud-cover). Credit: When using the data please credit the product generation to the Earth Observation Group, Payne Institute for Public Policy.

This global accessibility map enumerates land-based travel time to the nearest densely-populated area for all areas between 85 degrees north and 60 degrees south for a nominal year 2015. Densely-populated areas are defined as contiguous areas with 1,500 or more inhabitants per square kilometer or a majority of built-up land cover types coincident with a population centre of at least 50,000 inhabitants. This map was produced through a collaboration between the University of Oxford Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), Google, the European Union Joint Research Centre (JRC), and the University of Twente, Netherlands. The underlying datasets used to produce the map, include roads (comprising the first ever global-scale use of Open Street Map and Google roads datasets), railways, rivers, lakes, oceans, topographic conditions (slope and elevation), landcover types, and national borders. These datasets were each allocated a speed or speeds of travel in terms of time to cross each pixel of that type. The datasets were then combined to produce a “friction surface”, a map where every pixel is allocated a nominal overall speed of travel based on the types occurring within that pixel. Least-cost-path algorithms (running in Google Earth Engine and, for high-latitude areas, in R) were used in conjunction with this friction surface to calculate the time of travel from all locations to the nearest city (by travel time). Cities were determined using the high-density-cover product created by the Global Human Settlement Project. Each pixel in the resultant accessibility map thus represents the modeled shortest time from that location to a city. Full Citation D.J. Weiss, A. Nelson, H.S. Gibson, W. Temperley, S. Peedell, A. Lieber, M. Hancher, E. Poyart, S. Belchior, N. Fullman, B. Mappin, U. Dalrymple, J. Rozier, T.C.D. Lucas, R.E. Howes, L.S. Tusting, S.Y. Kang, E. Cameron, D. Bisanzio, K.E. Battle, S. Bhatt, and P.W. Gething. A global map of travel time to cities to assess inequalities in accessibility in 2015. (2018). Nature. doi:10.1038/nature25181.

Regional model ICON-D2 The DWD's ICON-D2 model is a forecast model which is operated for the very-short range up to +27 hours (+45 hours for the 03 UTC run). Due to its fine mesh size, the ICON-D2 especially provides for improved forecasts of hazardous weather conditions, e.g. weather situations with high-level moisture convection (super and multi-cell thunderstorms, squall lines, mesoscale convective complexes) and weather events that are influenced by fine-scale topographic effects (ground fog, Föhn winds, intense downslope winds, flash floods). The model area of ICON-D2 covers the whole German territory, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria and parts of the other neighbouring countries at a horizontal resolution of 2.2 km. In the vertical, the model defines 65 atmosphere levels. The fairly short forecast periods make perfect sense because of the purpose of ICON-D2 (and its small model area). Based on model runs at 00, 06, 09, 12, 15, 18 and 21 UTC, ICON-D2 provides new 27-hour forecasts every 3 hours. The model run at 03 UTC even covers a forecast period of 45 hours. The ICON-D2 forecast data for each weather element are made available in standard packages at our free DWD Open Data Server, both on a rotated grid and on a regular grid. Regional ensemble forecast model ICON-D2 EPS The ensemble forecasting system ICON-D2 EPS is based on the DWD's numerical weather forecast model ICON-D2 and currently includes 20 ensemble members. All ensemble members are calculated at the same horizontal grid spacing as the operational configuration of ICON-D2 (2.2 km). Like ICON-D2, the ICON-D2 EPS ensemble system provides forecasts up to +27 hours for the same model area (up to +45 hours based on the 03 UTC run). For generating the ensemble members, some of the features of the forecasting system are changed. The method currently used to generate the ensemble members involves varying the - lateral boundary conditions - initial state - soil moisture - and model physics. For varying the lateral boundary conditions and the initial state, forecasts from various global models are used. The ICON-D2 EPS is provided on the DWD Open Data Server in the native triangular grid. Note: All previously COSMO-D2 based aviation weather products have been migrated to ICON-D2 on 10.02.2021. However, the familiar design of these products remains unchanged.

When a natural disaster or disease outbreak occurs there is a rush to establish accurate health care location data that can be used to support people on the ground. This has been demonstrated by events such as the Haiti earthquake and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. As a result valuable time is wasted establishing accurate and accessible baseline data. Healthsites.io establishes this data and the tools necessary to upload, manage and make the data easily accessible. Global scope The Global Healthsites Mapping Project is an initiative to create an online map of every health facility in the world and make the details of each location easily accessible. Open data collaboration Through collaborations with users, trusted partners and OpenStreetMap the Global Healthsites Mapping Project will capture and validate the location and contact details of every facility and make this data freely available under an Open Data License (ODBL). Accessible The Global Healthsites Mapping Project will make the data accessible over the Internet through an API and other formats such as GeoJSON, Shapefile, KML, CSV. Focus on health care location data The Global Healthsites Mapping Project's design philosophy is the long term curation and validation of health care location data. The healthsites.io map will enable users to discover what healthcare facilities exist at any global location and the associated services and resources.

CAMS produces specific daily air quality analyses and forecasts for the European domain at significantly higher spatial resolution (0.1 degrees, approx. 10km) than is available from the global analyses and forecasts. Variables: Ammonia, Birch pollen, Carbon monoxide, Dust, Grass pollen, Nitrogen dioxide, Nitrogen monoxide, Non-methane VOCs, Olive pollen, Ozone, Particulate matter d < 10 µm (PM10), Particulate matter d < 10 µm - wildfires only, Particulate matter d < 2.5 µm (PM2.5), Particulate matter d < 2.5 µm - anthropogenic fossil fuel carbon only, Particulate matter d < 2.5 µm - anthropogenic wood burning carbon only, Peroxyacyl nitrates, Ragweed pollen, Secondary inorganic aerosol, Sulphur dioxide

Many two-dimensional parameter fields are provided in hourly, daily, and monthly resolution in grib1 format such as pressure, precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, and wind speed components at a height of 10m and 100m. Wind speed and wind direction at different fixed heights between 40m and 200m above ground are provided in netCDF format also in hourly, daily, and monthly resolution.A detailed list of two-and three-dimensional parameters can be found here: https://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/REA/ParameterTables.pdf Three-dimensional parameter fields are provided in hourly, daily, and monthly resolution for temperature, specific humidity, wind speed components, and turbulent kinetic energy. For the three-dimensional fields, the lowest 6 COSMO model levels are available. The heights are invariant in time but change with topography. Over the ocean, the lowest 6 model levels correspond to a height of 10m, 35m, 69m, 116m, 178m and 258m. Constant parameters, e.g., the height of the model levels, the model surface, etc., are stored in ftp://opendata.dwd.de/climate_environment/REA/COSMO_REA6/constant/. In addition, the geographical latitudes and longitudes relate to COSMO’s rotated longitude-latitude grid.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. OSM is considered a prominent example of volunteered geographic information. Data are collected using manual survey, GPS devices, aerial photography, and other free sources. This crowdsourced data are then made available under the Open Database License.