Sebastian Krantz - Data Products

Transport Network Optimizer

The Transport Network Optimizer is a web application for computing welfare-maximizing transport networks on user-supplied graphs, implementing the quantitative spatial economic model of Fajgelbaum & Schaal (2020, Econometrica). Given economic fundamentals – population, productivity, housing, and any pre-existing network – it solves for the optimal allocation of infrastructure investment across a graph, subject to a construction budget. Results are displayed on an interactive map and live solver output is streamed into a console. It is powered by the open-source OptimalTransportNetworks.jl Julia package (see also Software).

Web-Application | Julia Package | App Source

Infrastructure Risk Analyzer

The Infrastructure Risk Analyzer is a full-stack web application for automated climate and natural-hazard risk analysis of infrastructure assets. Users upload spatial datasets representing point or line infrastructure — such as roads, telecom towers or fiber networks — and analyze them against global hazard layers including floods, earthquakes, cyclones, and landslides. The tool classifies assets as affected or unaffected based on user-defined intensity thresholds and optionally estimates economic damage using uploaded vulnerability curves and replacement cost data. Results and high-resolution map and chart exports are available from the browser.

Infrastructure Risk Analyzer | Vulnerability Curves | App Source

Africa Infrastructure Database

The Africa Infrastructure Database, released in November 2024, is the largest open database of identified infrastructure assets, businesses, and economic geography in Africa – comprising 15.1 million points of interest and 4.4 million km of network infrastructure in 54 economic categories, alongside high-resolution data on household wealth, economic activity, population, and accessibility. It is provided in both raw form and aggregated (by category) over a 96km2 (9.7km diameter) hexagonal equal-area grid. Please refer to (and cite) the Kiel Working Paper.

Africa Infrastructure Database | Kiel Working Paper

Kiel Institute Africa Monitor

The Africamonitor is a macroeconomic information plattform for Africa. It provides research briefs (data stories), custom visualizations, and centralized access to the leading economic indicators on African economies. The underlying database is global in scope (covering all 195 countries) and updated on a monthly basis. It contains >1000 series collected from 16 public sources (mostly IMF and World Bank databases). Nearly all selected series have high coverage of African economies (50 on average) and other countries. API packages for R and Python allow free high-speed access to the entire database.

Web-Application | GitHub | Press Release | R API | Python API

South Africa Macroeconomic Database and Nowcast

The South Africa Macroeconomic Database (SAMADB) is an open relational database with >10,000 macroeconomic time series for South Africa, obtained from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and Statistics South Africa (STATSSA) and updated on a weekly basis via EconData and automated scraping of the SARB and STATSSA websites. It is accessible through API packages for R, Python and Julia. The SA nowcast is an automated weekly nowcast of GDP and Unemployment (updated every Friday) based on a mixed-frequency dynamic factor model able to attribute changes in the nowcast to new data releases.

Uganda Macro Data Portal and Time Series Database

An online data portal and time series database (UGATSDB) providing access to more than 12000 macroeconomic, financial and social time series on Uganda provided by the Bank of Uganda, MoFPED, UBOS, the World Bank, the IMF, and the ILO. Data are provided at the highest available frequency but can be filtered and aggregated in the portal. Data can be downloaded in various standard formats (Excel, CSV, TSV, STATA, R, SPSS and SAS). An R API package permits fast and easy access to tidy macroeconomic time series data in R.

Web-Application | Open Source Version | R API

Uganda Macroeconomic Monitor and GDP Nowcast

An interactive dashboard that tracks macroeconomic developments in Uganda using key indicators compiled by national bodies and available at high frequencies. The dashboard also presents a nowcast of quarterly GDP based on key monthly indicators.

Web-Application

Uganda Census Mapper

A comprehensive interactive visualization of the 2014 Census, displaying more than 200 census variables at different spatial resolutions, from macro-regions down to the parish level. Additional indices resembling the dimension-indices in the Human Development Index (HDI) are computed from census variables to display a census-HDI. The full census is also available for download in the Macro Data Portal.

Web-Application | Open Source Version

Website for Uganda Macroeconomic Policy Department incl. Semi-Automated Monthly Economic Performance Reports

Homepage for the Macroeconomic Policy Department (MEPD) in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (MoFPED) of Uganda. It provides access to national macroeconomic data, economic monitoring tools, and the departments regular macroeconomic performance reports. The monthly report has partly automated tables and graphics (thanks to UGATSDB) and is available in HTML and PDF, facilitating its rapid production and consumption.

Website

BRAC Data Explorer

The BRAC Data Explorer is a web application for quick exploratory analysis and geo-visualization of survey data (as frequently collected by BRAC Research). The apps permits upload of data in various formats, and exploratory statistical analysis (summary statistics, histograms, correlations, PCA, clustering, and model selection - guided by the free book 'An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in R'). The geo-visualization module provides interactive spatial visualizations powered by the Leaflet JavaScript library.

Web-Application