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.
Refer to pixi installation docs
Linux & macOS
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UNDP-Data/rapida/refs/heads/main/deploy/pixi.tomlWindows
curl.exe -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/UNDP-Data/rapida/refs/heads/main/deploy/pixi.tomlCreate a .env file and define following environmental variables. Alternatively ensure the environmental variables defined below exists in your system
# 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=
# override road type default seed for connectivity analysis
#"motorway": 105,
#"trunk": 90,
#"primary": 75,
#"secondary": 60,
#"tertiary": 50,
#"unclassified": 40,
#"residential": 35,
#"service": 25
MJOLNIR_SECONDARY_SPEED=40pixi 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 │
└──────────┴───────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴───────────┴───────────────────────┘