Validation of urban boundaries derived from global night-time satellite imagery

Night-time imagery from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) has been proposed as a useful tool for monitoring urban expansion around the world, but determining appropriate light thresholds for delineating cities remains a challenge. In this paper we present a new approach. We used DMSP stable lights and radiance-calibrated images to delimit urban boundaries for San Francisco, Beijing and Lhasa, cities with different levels of urbanization and economic development, and compared the results against boundaries derived from high-resolution Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery. Unthresholded DMSP images exaggerate and shift the extent of these urban areas. We then calculated light thresholds that minimized the discrepancies between the DMSP- and TM-derived urban boundaries for each city. Our comparison highlights the difficulty of using DMSP data across areas with disparate urban characteristics, but suggests the possibility of calibrating this data source for monitoring growth of cities at comparable levels of development.

[1]  D. Roberts,et al.  Census from Heaven: An estimate of the global human population using night-time satellite imagery , 2001 .

[2]  J. Coulter,et al.  The Rural--Urban Dichotomy in China: A Case Study of the Mid-Yellow River Region using Remote Sensing Data , 1982, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs.

[3]  P. Sutton,et al.  Radiance Calibration of DMSP-OLS Low-Light Imaging Data of Human Settlements , 1999 .

[4]  C. Elvidge,et al.  Mapping City Lights With Nighttime Data from the DMSP Operational Linescan System , 1997 .

[5]  Justin A. Curtis,et al.  Defense Meteorological Satellite Program , 1987, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.

[6]  P. Sutton.  Modeling population density with night-time satellite imagery and GIS , 1997 .

[7]  C. Lo,et al.  CHINESE URBAN POPULATION ESTIMATES , 1977 .

[8]  C. Elvidge,et al.  A Technique for Using Composite DMSP/OLS "City Lights"Satellite Data to Map Urban Area , 1997 .

[9]  C. Lo,et al.  Land Use Changes and City Planning in Shenyang and Canton , 1977 .

[10]  Christopher D. Elvidge,et al.  Satellite inventory of human settlements using nocturnal radiation emissions: a contribution for the global toolchest , 1997 .

[11]  Dar A. Roberts,et al.  A Comparison of Nighttime Satellite Imagery and Population Density for the Continental United States , 1997 .

[12]  Grinding Facility,et al.  Office Of Air Quality Planning And Standards , 1976 .

[13]  Lester R. Brown,et al.  Who Will Feed China?: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet , 1995 .