Quantitative Evaluation for the Blooming Effect of Nighttime Light Data in China

Abstract

In recent years, nighttime light (NTL) data has been widely used in the urban associated researches thanks to its ability in characterizing human’s activity. NTL data has an advantage on detecting urban areas and reflecting economic conditions. However, NTL data has two main problems: saturation and blooming effect. These two problems will reduce the accuracy of urban detection and social-economic indicators estimations. There have been increasing attentions on saturation effect and correction although new version of VIIRS data has significantly alleviated the saturation effect. While for blooming effect, few researches is existing. Most researches about blooming effect are still qualitative rather than quantitative. This paper takes China as study area to measure blooming distance of NTL data and explore the contributions of three main factors on blooming effect.