The OnSSET Starter Data Kits provide ready-to-use national datasets for geospatial electrification planning.
A Google Colab notebook that automates the collection of geospatial and techno-economic datasets needed to run an OnSSET electrification analysis for a given country.
Instead of manually sourcing boundaries, population, grid infrastructure, renewable resource data, land cover, and other inputs from a dozen different providers, this notebook fetches, clips, and packages everything for your country of interest in one run — all from open-access sources.
- Select a country and the datasets you need from a simple form interface.
- The notebook downloads each dataset from its open-access source, clips it to your country boundary, and saves it in a structured
Data/<ISO3>/folder. - Download everything as a single zip, ready to use as OnSSET model inputs.
See METHODOLOGY.md for a full breakdown of where each dataset comes from, how it's fetched, and its licence.
- Country boundaries (GADM)
- Population count (WorldPop)
- Medium voltage lines (Gridfinder)
- Roads (OpenStreetMap via Geofabrik)
- Solar irradiation and hourly profile (Global Solar Atlas, Renewables.ninja)
- Wind speed and hourly profile (Global Wind Atlas, Renewables.ninja)
- Land cover (MODIS MCD12Q1)
- Elevation model (NASA Earthdata)
- Nighttime lights (WorldPop/VIIRS)
- Travel time (Malaria Atlas Project)
- Settlements (Khavari et al.)
- Non-GIS specs template (blank workbook with suggested sources for OnSSET's non-spatial parameters)
- Open the notebook in Google Colab.
- Run the Setup cell to install dependencies.
- Run the open-access override cells (MV lines/Roads, and Wind & Solar profiles).
- Register for free accounts where needed:
- NASA Earthdata — required for land cover and elevation
- Renewables.ninja — required for wind profile and as a solar profile fallback
- In the Setup and select datasets cell, enter your credentials, choose a country, and select the datasets you want.
- Click Get Data, then use the Download data cell to retrieve your results as a zip file.
Currently covers countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. See GEOFABRIK_REGION_MAP in the notebook for the full list. Adding a new country generally requires one new entry in each of the relevant lookup tables.
All datasets are open access; most require no registration beyond the two free accounts noted above. See METHODOLOGY.md for the licence of each individual source.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for substantial changes so we can discuss scope before you put in the work.
Developed by the Data and Tools team at Climate Compatible Growth, in collaboration with KTH and supported by UK aid.