VIIRS night-time lights

Elvidge, Christopher D.; Baugh, Kimberly; Zhizhin, Mikhail; Hsu, Feng-Chi; Ghosh, Tilottama

doi:10.1080/01431161.2017.1342050

Cited by 721 publications

(474 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…These data are radiance calibrated, and consist only of observations that were taken under clear sky conditions (as determined by infrared channels of the VIIRS sensor), and without twilight illumination or stray light [8]. The fall months were chosen based on our experience using the DNB data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Changes in outdoor lighting in Germany from 2012-2016

Kyba

Kuester

Kuechly

2017

IJSL

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Changes in the total lit area and the radiance of stably lit area in the German federal states from 2012-2016 were investigated using satellite observations from the Day-Night Band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. Most states increased in both lit area and radiance. The lit area of Bayern and Schleswig-Holstein grew most rapidly, but it is possible that their large increases are to some extent driven by a darker than usual observation in 2012. Thüringen was dramatically different from the other states, with an annual decrease in lit area, and in the radiance of stably lit areas. The rates of change measured from 2012-2015 and 2013-2016 are strongly correlated with each other (Pearson's ρ=0.67, p=0.01). In most states, least squares fits for the rate of change match the rate calculated as a ratio of 2016 to 2012. These results are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that the changes in observed radiance are due to lighting change, but this should be verified in the future when longer time series are available. Due to the (500-900 nm) spectral response of the satellite, transitions from high pressure sodium to LED street lighting that preserve total lumen output are be expected to be observed as a decrease in radiance. Since such decreases are not observed in most states, the observations of increasing light emissions in most states are not indicative of a national transition toward sustainable lighting. In addition to these results, this paper discusses the role of remotely sensed nighttime data within the context of sustainable lighting.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is currently developing annual based composites, which should be less affected by such errors [8]. To reduce the impact of such events, pixels were therefore only considered lit in a given year if they were above a 3 nW/cm 2 sr threshold in both the October and November composites.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in outdoor lighting in Germany from 2012-2016

Kyba

Kuester

Kuechly

2017

IJSL

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“…There are several pixels of negative radiance values on the images from monthly composites. These negative radiance values result from the system noise in the dark current correction process [20]. The average northern hemisphere dark night ocean data was utilized in the dark current correction process, but some system noise remained that made some pixels slightly negative in no-light areas [20].…”

Section: Correction Of the Npp-viirs Ntl Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A Zipf’s Law-Based Method for Mapping Urban Areas Using NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Data

Zhao

Jiang

2018

Remote Sensing

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A significant difficulty in urban studies is obtaining urban areas. Nighttime light (NTL) data provide efficient approaches to map urban areas. Previous methods have utilized visual particularities of cities with ancillary data to obtain the optimal thresholds. How cities behave differently from rural areas should be considered. A Zipf's law-based method is proposed to bootstrap the optimal threshold based on the statistical properties of a Zipf's law model on continuous thresholds at the country scale. In our method, the Zipf's law model is utilized to quantify fractal, self-organized, and agglomeration behaviors of cities. The three-phase cluster dynamics are discovered and the abrupt transition between Phase 1 and Phase 2 denotes the rural-urban demarcation point. The urban areas are derived by the proposed method from the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) NTL data in 2013 in China. An accuracy assessment is conducted to compare it with the GlobeLand30-2010 data and the overall accuracy has directly confirmed the effectiveness of the method. The validation using point of interest (POI) data verifies that the urban areas show strong responses to social interactions and production with R 2 values of 0.91 and 0.92, respectively, implying that the city areas extracted by our method can be a proxy for human activities. Comparisons with existing methods validate the effectiveness and high degree of automation of the proposed method in mapping urban areas at the country level. According to our analyses, the Zipf's law-based method shows great potential to provide a universal criterion to map urban areas from the perspective of the behaviors of urban systems without ancillary data, and a valuable tool for spatial and temporal urban studies.

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“…In the past, the façade lighting was sometimes reduced due to a lamp burning out but not being immediately noticed, and there is no record of when lamps were replaced. The isolation of the church makes it possible to directly identify the light coming from the church using data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Day-Night Band (VIIRS DNB) instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite [24]. The pixel size of a DNB observation is around 750 m, so to uniquely identify a single lighting installation, it must be well separated from other lights.…”

Section: Prior Lightingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing the environmental footprint of church lighting: matching façade shape and lowering luminance with the EcoSky LED

Kyba

Mohar

Pintar

et al. 2018

IJSL

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In rural areas of Europe, ornamental lighting, and particularly church lighting, is often among the most important sources of light emissions from communities. In current practice of façade lighting for churches, much of the produced light misses the target area, and façade luminance is often far larger than is necessary. This results in a dramatic waste of electrical energy and significant light pollution for the surrounding areas. This article discusses the concept of sustainability with regards to cultural heritage lighting, within the context of the façade lighting of a specific church. The lighting of the Church of the Three Kings in Logatec, Slovenia was replaced in 2014. The power of the installation was reduced 96% from 1.6 kW to 58 W, and spill light from the site was effectively eliminated. As a result, the church is no longer visible in nighttime satellite images of the area, indicating a reduction of waste light from the site of at least a factor of 30. This example demonstrates the dramatic extent to which more general application of lighting design principles could reduce energy consumption and light pollution in the rural European context.

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VIIRS night-time lights

Cited by 721 publications

References 23 publications

Changes in outdoor lighting in Germany from 2012-2016

Changes in outdoor lighting in Germany from 2012-2016

A Zipf’s Law-Based Method for Mapping Urban Areas Using NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Data

Reducing the environmental footprint of church lighting: matching façade shape and lowering luminance with the EcoSky LED

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