Steel Stock Estimation for Building and Civil Construction by Satellite Image

Abstract

Steel is the most widely used metal in the world. Many studies analyzing the flow and stock of steels have been conducted for Japan, Asian countries and the world. While top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used in these material flow and stock analyses, the applicability of these approaches is dependent on data availability. To overcome this problem, we proposed a methodology to estimate steel stock based on satellite images. Previous studies have shown that satellite images of nighttime lights are closely correlated with human activities, such as electricity consumption, CO 2 emissions, and GDP, which can also be linked to the amount of steel stock. In this study, images of nighttime lights were used in conjunction with land cover data to estimate the building and civil construction steel stock in Japan and other Asian countries. Analysis was first performed for each prefecture in Japan, and then the results were applied to China, South Korea and Taiwan. Building steel stock was highly correlated with urban nighttime lights, while the steel stock used for civil construction structures correlated more closely with total nighttime lights. This work is considered as revised version of the authors’ previous study by updating some of the nighttime light data.