Detection of Multidimensional Poverty Using Luojia 1-01 Nighttime Light Imagery

Abstract

Poverty is a complex social problem, and accurate poverty identification is a key step for creating strategies to eliminate poverty. The Luojia 1-01 satellite is part of a new generation of professional nighttime light remote sensing that was successfully launched on July 2, 2018, and has provided 130-m high-resolution nighttime light images for poverty studies. This study aimed to detect the accuracy of multidimensional poverty evaluation using Luojia 1-01 data at the county level. Drawing on a sustainable livelihood framework, the spatial patterns of multidimensional poverty were identified across Hubei province. The results found that there was a good correlation between the nighttime light index and the sustainable livelihoods index, and a second-order linear model had the best goodness of fit with a coefficient of determination of 0.88 and root mean square error of 0.03, indicating a good model performance. Counties affected by multidimensional poverty were mainly distributed in the west, northeast, and southeast of Hubei, and the agreement between the model results and counties identified by the government as impoverished was 73.08%. Due to its high-resolution and rich spatial information, Luojia 1-01 data can be used to efficiently and accurately identify the scale of multidimensional poverty at the county level and provide the relevant government departments with a scientific basis for implementing responsible and holistic poverty alleviation policies.