Global Urban Monitoring Using High Resolution Night-time Lights

Nighttime lights satellite data have proven to be a useful proxy for human development in numerous contexts, including urban development, population, and gross domestic product. In many data-poor regions of the world, the data derived from these satellite images are unparalleled in scope, accuracy, and coverage. The consistency of the data across the globe makes the human development estimations derived from the nighttime lights satellite data comparable between countries, which is often not the case when comparing other measures of human development. Currently, the nighttime lights data are delivered as yearly composites of the DMSP-OLS satellite (and are freely downloadable online). These products are useful, but suffer from a coarse spatial resolution (a single cell covers ~ one square kilometer) and are subject to several important sources of measurement error, emanating from the problem of sensor saturation and the phenomenon of over-glow. A new satellite launched in 2011 called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is remedying this situation with a new sensor that has a much finer spatial resolution (~ 300 m), as well as a more frequent data delivery schedule and more advanced, multi-spectral imaging capabilities. This proposal is to collaborate with scientists at the National Geospatial Data Centre.