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Utilizing Suomi NPP's Day-Night Band to Assess Energy Consumption and Investigate its Suitability as a Proxy for Poverty in Thailand

While poverty in Thailand has decreased from 67% in 1986 to 13% in 2012, 6.7 million people were still living within 20% of the poverty line in 2014. Economic uncertainty caused by recurring droughts and decreasing agricultural prices puts this vulnerable part of the population at risk of dropping below the national poverty line in the future. In order to address this issue, the DEVELOP team worked with the Office of Science and Technology (OSTC) at the Royal Thai Embassy, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), and the NASA SERVIR Coordination Office to formulate a new method of analyzing poverty within Thailand. This project utilized the monthly composite product for 2012-2015 produced by the Earth Observations Group (EOG) at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). Additionally, this project incorporated socio-economic data from Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology's National Statistical Office and Ministry of Education's National Education Information System to create an enhanced poverty index. This new poverty index will provide the Thai government a cost-effective way to analyze changes of poverty within the nation and inform policy making.