Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future

Remote sensing of night light emissions in the visible band offers a unique opportunity to directly observe human activity from space. This has allowed a host of applications including mapping urban areas, estimating population and GDP, monitoring disasters and conflicts. More recently, remotely sen...

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Vydáno v:Remote sensing of environment Ročník 237; s. 111443
Hlavní autoři: Levin, Noam, Kyba, Christopher C.M., Zhang, Qingling, Sánchez de Miguel, Alejandro, Román, Miguel O., Li, Xi, Portnov, Boris A., Molthan, Andrew L., Jechow, Andreas, Miller, Steven D., Wang, Zhuosen, Shrestha, Ranjay M., Elvidge, Christopher D.
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: New York Elsevier Inc 01.02.2020
Elsevier BV
Témata:
anthropogenic activities
Daylight
Detection
Disasters
DMSP/OLS
Ecological monitoring
Emissions
energy
Energy consumption
Environmental impact
Human activity
human health
ISS
Light emission
Light pollution
Light sources
lighting
Mapping
monitoring
Night
Night lights
Optical measuring instruments
pollution
Population statistics
Remote sensing
Remote sensors
Satellite constellations
satellites
Sensors
solar radiation
Spatial discrimination
Spatial resolution
temporal variation
Urban
Urban areas
VIIRS/DNB
Urban
DMSP/OLS
Light pollution
Human activity
ISS
Night lights
VIIRS/DNB
ISSN:0034-4257, 1879-0704
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Shrnutí:Remote sensing of night light emissions in the visible band offers a unique opportunity to directly observe human activity from space. This has allowed a host of applications including mapping urban areas, estimating population and GDP, monitoring disasters and conflicts. More recently, remotely sensed night lights data have found use in understanding the environmental impacts of light emissions (light pollution), including their impacts on human health. In this review, we outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state of the art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights. While the paper mainly focuses on space borne remote sensing, ground based sensing of night-time brightness for studies on astronomical and ecological light pollution, as well as for calibration and validation of space borne data, are also discussed. Although the development of night light sensors lags behind day-time sensors, we demonstrate that the field is in a stage of rapid development. The worldwide transition to LED lights poses a particular challenge for remote sensing of night lights, and strongly highlights the need for a new generation of space borne night lights instruments. This work shows that future sensors are needed to monitor temporal changes during the night (for example from a geostationary platform or constellation of satellites), and to better understand the angular patterns of light emission (roughly analogous to the BRDF in daylight sensing). Perhaps most importantly, we make the case that higher spatial resolution and multispectral sensors covering the range from blue to NIR are needed to more effectively identify lighting technologies, map urban functions, and monitor energy use. •Remote sensing of night lights allows observation of human activity from space.•We provide a historical overview of the development of such night-time sensors.•We highlight various applications of remote sensing of night lights.•We discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights.•We provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights.
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ISSN:0034-4257
1879-0704
DOI:10.1016/j.rse.2019.111443