Assessing Light Pollution Using POI and Luojia1-01 Night-Time Imagery From a Quantitative Perspective at City Scale

Abstract

In previous studies using night-time light (NTL) image in analyzing light pollution, most of the researchers focused on national or regional scale analysis. While in this article we focus on the perception of light pollution's influence to the environment of human settlement. We propose an analysis method mainly utilizing NTL images and a city's point of interest (POI) data to assess the light pollution from the aspect of its impact on the environment of city residents. The method quickly provides light pollution analysis at a fine spatial scale. We also address the POI data in a novel aggregating algorithm to better construct the area of interest, which can conquer the limitation of spatial resolution of NTL data in some extent. By doing the assessment in two Chinese medium-size cities, light pollution sources, the pollution level for each residence are found and analyzed. Furthermore, several light pollution patterns are discovered and interpreted. The result of the experiment demonstrates our assessment method provides a fast way to analyze light pollution patterns and can show the detailed light pollution situation in a city.