Long-Term Monitoring of the Impacts of Disaster on Human Activity Using DMSP/OLS Nighttime Light Data: A Case Study of the 2008 Wenchuan, China Earthquake

Abstract

Time series monitoring of earthquake-stricken areas is significant in evaluating post-disaster reconstruction and recovery. The time series of nighttime light (NTL) data collected by the defense meteorological satellite program-operational linescan system (DMSP/OLS) sensors provides a unique and valuable resource to study changes in human activity (HA) because of the long period of available data. In this paper, the DMSP/OLS NTL images' digital number (DN) is used as a proxy for the intensity of HA since there is a high correlation between them. The purpose of this study is to develop a methodology to analyze the changes of intensity and distribution of HA in different areas affected by a 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, China. In order to compare the trends of HA before and after the earthquake, the DMSP/OLS NTL images from 2003 to 2013 were processed and analyzed. However, their analysis capability is greatly limited owing to a lack of in-flight calibration. To improve the continuity and comparability of DMSP/OLS NTL images, this study developed an automatic intercalibration method to systematically correct NTL data. The results reveal that: (1) compared with the HA before the earthquake, the reconstruction and recovery of the Wenchuan earthquake have led to a significant increase of HA in earthquake-stricken areas within three years after the earthquake; (2) the fluctuation of HA in a severely-affected area is greater than that in a less-affected area; (3) recovery efforts increase development in the most affected areas to levels that exceeded the rates in similar areas which experienced less damage; and (4) areas alongside roads and close to reconstruction projects exhibited increased development in regions with otherwise low human activity.

Characterizing Light Pollution Trends across Protected Areas in China Using Nighttime Light Remote Sensing Data

“…Cold spots were mainly concentrated in Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan Province caused serious damage to the city's infrastructure and light source providers in the affected area, which may explain the reduction in light pollution [55]. Due to superior natural conditions, there are several nature reserves in these regions.…”

Analysis and Reduction of Solar Stray Light in the Nighttime Imaging Camera of Luojia-1 Satellite

“…Nighttime images include not only urban lights but also lights from fishing vessels, natural gas combustion, forest fires, etc. [ 10 ]. These images are widely utilized in research areas, such as economy assessment, regional development research, major event evaluation, and fishery monitoring [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].…”

Assessing the Ability of Luojia 1-01 Imagery to Detect Feeble Nighttime Lights

“…In recent years, nighttime light (NTL) has been a hot topic in remote sensing research. Because of the unique ability of NTL to reveal human activities as well as NTL’s advantages of spatiotemporal continuity and independence [1,2], NTL is widely used to estimate gross domestic product (GDP) [3,4,5], population [6,7] and electricity consumption [8,9], urbanization monitoring [10,11,12,13,14], ecological environmental changes [15], and major event assessment [16,17,18,19,20].…”

“…It represents a low level of human settlement, such as towns and villages, or some irregular human activities, which may be caused by traffic or the construction of a building or a road. For example, scholars have found that low-intensity NTL can be used to explain the consistent between the maintenance of the main roads after the 2008 Wen Chuan earthquake and NTL strips on the time series NTL images from DMSP [18]. In this paper, these low-intensity NTL emitted by small size of human settlements and unstable human activities are defined as “Feeble NTL”.…”