Rapida provides a suite of tools for real-time crisis assessment, relying on a vast ecosystem of software libraries. Because many of these dependencies are written in C/C++ for performance and require complex, dynamic linking to system-level libraries, installation can be notoriously difficult. To eliminate this barrier, Rapida leverages pixi — a fast, modern, and highly reproducible package manager that guarantees a seamless setup across all platforms.
Pixi defaults to the biggest Conda package repository, conda-forge, which contains over 30,000 packages.
git winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget
git winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget
curl.exe -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UNDP-Data/rapida/refs/heads/main/deploy/pixi.tomlpixi install
pixi run setup
PS C:\Users\rapida\rapida> pixi run rapida
✨ Pixi task (rapida): dotenv -e .env rapida
Usage: rapida [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
UNDP Crisis Bureau Rapida tool.
This command line tool is designed to assess various geospatial variables
representing exposure and vulnerability aspects of geospatial risk induced
by natural hazards.
Options:
--help Show this message and exit.
Commands:
init initialize RAPIDA tool
auth authenticate with UNDP account
admin fetch administrative boundaries at various levels from
OSM/OCHA
create create a RAPIDA project in a new folder
assess assess/evaluate a specific geospatial exposure
components/variables
list-project list RAPIDA projects/folders located in default Azure file
share
download download a RAPIDA project from Azure file share
upload upload a RAPIDA project to Azure file share
publish publish RAPIDA project results to Azure and GeoHub
delete delete a RAPIDA project from Azure file share
addh3id add h3id to a vector dataset
population Population data management commands.
ntl Nighttime Lights VIIRS data and impact detection
connectivity run connectivity analysis
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UNDP-Data/rapida/refs/heads/main/deploy/install.ps1 | iex"
See Git installation instructions
curl -fsSL https://pixi.sh/install.sh | sh# or
wget -qO- https://pixi.sh/install.sh | sh
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UNDP-Data/rapida/refs/heads/main/deploy/pixi.tomlpixi install
pixi run setup
There are two types of environmental variables: mandatory and optional. The mandatory ones contain information that is required to operate specific parts of rapida like downloading imagery from earthdata through a token or authenticating to space-track.org. Rapida throws and error if these variables are not defined and needed.
# for uploading to azure
TENANT_ID=
CLIENT_ID=
# for downloading NTL data from Black Marble
EARTHDATA_TOKEN=
# for predicting precisely VIIRS orbits
SPACETRACK_USER=
SPACETRACK_PASSWORD=The optional environmental variables do not generate errors if not defined. Rapida lets the user know whenever these variables arte detected and detected and override/change default behaviour with a custom one.
# override road type default seed for connectivity analysis
#Default values
#"motorway": 105,
#"trunk": 90,
#"primary": 75,
#"secondary": 60,
#"tertiary": 50,
#"unclassified": 40,
#"residential": 35,
#"service": 25
# variables that change default values
#MJOLNIR_MOTORWAY_SPEED=60
#MJOLNIR_TRUNK_SPEED=50
#MJOLNIR_PRIMARY_SPEED=35
#MJOLNIR_SECONDARY_SPEED=25
#MJOLNIR_UNCLASSIFIED_SPEED=15
#MJOLNIR_RESIDENTIAL_SPEED=12
#MJOLNIR_SERVICE_SPEED=8
#CONNECTIVITY_OSM_SOURCE=MOVISDA # MOVISDA, GEOFABRIK
pixi run rapida ntl detect --help
✨ Pixi task (rapida): dotenv -e .env rapida ntl detect --help
Usage: rapida ntl detect [OPTIONS]
Options:
-b, --bbox BBOX Bounding box xmin/west, ymin/south,
xmax/east, ymax/north [required]
--date [%Y-%m-%d] The human experience of a specific night,
local time zone matched to the center of
bbox [required]
--dst-dir DIRECTORY Destination directory to save the downloaded
the images. [default: /tmp]
-d [noaa_outage|nasa_nrt_outage|nasa_outage]
One or more of the RAPIDA NTL deliverables.
[required]
--popvar TEXT One or more RAPIDA population variable to
compute zonal stats for outages
-ot, --percentage_drop INTEGER Specify the outage drop threshold that wil
determine the spatial structure of an outage
event,
-cm, --cmask Enable strict Cloud Masking (ignores pixels
with NASA quality flags of 3). Disable this
flag during major storm events to prevent
atmospheric noise from erroneously masking
out legitimate blackout signals.
--display Show a graphic visualization of the outage
analysis.Useful to inspect the input imagery
and debug/understand the outage results
--debug Enable debug logging.
--help Show this message and exit.
pixi run rapida ntl search noaa -b -72.3,7.5,-64.16,13.72 --date 2026-07-10 -cm
✨ Pixi task (rapida): dotenv -e .env rapida ntl search noaa -b -72.3,7.5,-64.16,13.72 --date 2026-07-10 -cm
[07/17/26 01:32:59] INFO Skipping DescendingPass: SNPP-202607100504 because of low elevation angle 13.664044 search.py:396
[07/17/26 01:33:07] INFO Skipping DescendingPass: N21-202607100429 because of low elevation angle 4.678326 search.py:396
[07/17/26 01:33:09] INFO Skipping DescendingPass: N21-202607100749 because of low elevation angle 2.797944 search.py:396
VIIRS satellites granules for the night of 2026-07-10 covering (-72.3, 7.5, -64.16, 13.72)
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Position ┃ Satellite ┃ Timestamp (UTC) ┃ Bbox offset from SSP (km) ┃ Elevation above bbox (degrees) ┃ Cloud coverage in bbox (%) ┃ Score (%) ┃ BBOX intersection (%) ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1 │ N21 │ 202607100609 │ 115 │ 80.81 │ 89 │ 42 │ 81 │
│ 2 │ SNPP │ 202607100644 │ 798 │ 39.82 │ 88 │ 24 │ 75 │
│ 3 │ N20 │ 202607100523 │ 1191 │ 26.91 │ 93 │ 15 │ 43 │
│ 4 │ N20 │ 202607100703 │ 1443 │ 20.95 │ 96 │ 11 │ 35 │
└──────────┴───────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴───────────┴───────────────────────┘