How should the map be read?
💡 Economic activity: bright areas often coincide with large cities, industry, services, transport and trade.
🏙️ Urbanisation: connected fields of light trace expanding metropolitan regions and urban corridors.
⚡ Access to electricity: darkness may reflect sparse population, limited infrastructure, poverty or physical constraints. It should not be read as a single measure of development.
🛢️ Oil, gas and industry: some bright points are extraction sites, gas flares, ports or industrial areas rather than cities.
🌍 Contrasts: the layer exposes large differences in electrification and the spatial concentration of activity.
🧭 Patterns to find: the Nile appears as a narrow line through the desert, Europe forms a dense network, and the Korean Peninsula contains one of the clearest national contrasts in night-time illumination.
Source and limitation
The map uses the NASA GIBS / Worldview WMTS layer VIIRS City Lights 2012. Night-time illumination is an indirect indicator: sensor characteristics, temporary lights and differences in electricity use affect what appears in the composite.
© The Museum of Maps, 2026