Assessing the utility of DMSP/OLS night-time images for characterizing indian urbanization

Abstract

Urbanization, that is the movement of population from rural to urban locations, is a process that has been occurring for hundreds of years, but is increasingly prevalent in today's world. In 2008 most of the global population was resident in urban areas. It has been predicted that in the coming years, an increasing number of people will be living in cities; especially in the developing countries within in Asia and Latin America. This study considers the case of India, the second most populated country in the world, with a present total population exceeding 1 billion. It focuses on the state of Maharashtra (including the mega-city of Mumbai and its surrounds -the largest in India with a population of approximately 18.1 million). The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS) is a spaceborne system that detects visible light and thermal emissions of the earth at night. The data is collected nightly, on a global basis. The aim of this paper is to correlate the values obtained from the radiance calibrated DMSP/OLS night-time images of 2001 with population data. The spatial resolution of DMSP/OLS images is approximately 1 Km. This paper asks the question over what range of spatial scales does DMSP/OLS have utility in retrieving metrics of urbanization.

Diet and habitat affinities in six raptor species in India

“…India in general, and Maharashtra State in particular, are fast-changing from being rural and with open grasslands and natural forests, to a greatly exploited region with fast development and expansion of urban areas (cf. Roychowdhury et al 2009;Pande et al 2017). The understanding of wildlife assemblages and guilds at the earliest is critical in order to be able to recommend appropriate conservation measures in the near future.…”

Nexus of Health and Development: Modelling Crude Birth Rate and Maternal Mortality Ratio Using Nighttime Satellite Images

“…As a result, the overall radiance and stable lights captured by nighttime images over these states are comparatively low when compared to the Mumbai and Delhi conurbations. Therefore, the model adjusted r 2 values, though significant, are low compared to other parts of the country, as observed by the authors in their previous publications [6,7,18,20]. Furthermore, the health data was calculated on a sample population from the districts.…”

“…The first global map of the GDP purchasing power parity (GDP-PPP) [14] and gas flares [15] used radiance calibrated DMSP-OLS data to map urban and suburban extent around cities [16,17]. At the smaller spatial scale, the DMSP-OLS dataset was used to estimate population and other socio-economic metrics for the state of Maharashtra in India [7,[18][19][20][21] and GDP estimates [22].…”

The role of satellite data in census: Case study of an Indian State

“…This data has been used for mapping urban extents [11,12] in the United States. At the sub-national level, radiance calibrated global composite data has also been used to predict population density [13] and map urban areas [14]. Other studies [15] have investigated the utility of separate fixed gain radiance calibrated datasets for predicting census metrics at different spatial scales.…”