Nighttime Light Remote Sensing-Monitoring Human Societies from Outer Space

This chapter focuses on a unique type of remote sensing technology: observing nighttime lights from outer space to monitor human societies. Contrasting with conventional environmental remote sensing, nighttime light remote sensing aims at measuring human activities from outer space. The Operational Linescan System on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP/OLS) has been collecting routine nighttime light observations globally since early 1970s and have been proved as a close proxy to human activities at night (Croft 1978). Nighttime light remote sensing provides the great potential to fill the gap between social sciences and remote sensing. Furthermore, nighttime light analysis has its own environmental value: assessing the impacts of anthropogenic activities on the environmental systems. Given the preceding discussions, this chapter will focus on the three areas of nighttime light remote sensing. First, a review of the history of nighttime light remote sensing and its evolution is provided. Second, major applications of nighttime light remote sensing related to social and natural sciences are illustrated. Third, challenges in future directions of nighttime lights remote sensing are discussed and a number of suggestions are made.