World Bank

The World Bank (formally the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD) is an international development finance institution founded in 1944, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and owned by 189 member countries.^[1] In the Earth observation domain, the World Bank functions as an EO data consumer and programme operator, commissioning, curating, and distributing satellite-derived datasets for development applications.^[2] Through its partnership with ESA, established over more than 15 years, the World Bank has applied Copernicus and Sentinel open data to over 87 projects across approximately 70 countries since 2020, spanning land use mapping, flood monitoring, vegetation analysis, coastal ecosystem tracking, pasture monitoring, infrastructure vulnerability assessment, electrification tracking, and urban development monitoring.^[3] The World Bank produces the Light Every Night (LEN) dataset, an open-access archive of all nightly DMSP-OLS imagery (1992-2017) and VIIRS-DNB imagery (2012-2020), distributed through the AWS Open Data Registry in collaboration with NOAA and the University of Michigan.^[4] The World Bank also operates the Space2Stats programme, which standardises geospatial datasets at administrative levels and global grids for cross-country development analytics, and the Geospatial Operations Support Team, which embeds EO data into project design and implementation.^[2] According to World Bank reporting as of 2026, approximately $6 billion in development finance has been informed by EO-supported activities,^[2] with $16 million allocated to scaling EO capabilities and 80 EO capabilities deployed as of the same reporting period.^[2]