Abstract
We report on a systematic ground-based validation of DMSP-OLS night lights imagery to detect rural electrification in Vietnam. Based on an original survey of village-level units in Vietnam, this study compares nighttime light output from the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) against ground-based survey data on electrical infrastructure and electricity use in 200 electrified villages. Monthly and annual composites record a one-point increase in brightness along DMSP-OLS’s 63-point brightness scale for every 60–70 additional streetlights or 240–270 electrified homes. Using a time series of 90 nightly images, the data show a one-point increase in brightness for every 125–200 additional streetlights, or 550–700 additional electrified homes. The results highlight the potential to use night lights imagery to support efforts to connect the 1.2 billion people who lack electricity around the world.
Highlights
Nighttime lights have long been recognized as a valuable indicator of the availability and use of electricity around the world
Each of the correlations are statistically significant and positive with a Pearson’s correlation coefficient ranging from 0.77 to 0.92, indicating that satellite imagery provides a reliable measure of the intensity of electricity use in Vietnam
Across all 680 observations over the time series, the two measures correlate at a level of 0.85 with a p-value of less than 0.001, evidence of a clear positive relationship between electricity use and total brightness observed from space
Summary
Nighttime lights have long been recognized as a valuable indicator of the availability and use of electricity around the world. A key motivation for conducting this study in Vietnam is to evaluate the properties of nighttime satellite data in detecting electricity use in a country with relatively robust electricity usage, widespread household access to electricity, and relatively consistent power service with few power outages This is important since it enables us to mostly rule out variations in the quality and reliability of the power grid on the ground as we seek to better understand variability in (DMSP-OLS) nightly data across the developing world [1,14,15,16]. A Reassessment of the Costs and Benefits”, which states that “the dominant use of electricity in rural households is lighting” [12]
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