Data Files of Suitability of NASA's Black Marble Daily Nighttime Lights for Population Studies at Varying Spatial and Temporal Scales

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This Knowledge Package provides data for the research paper titled "Suitability of NASA's Black Marble Daily Nighttime Lights for Population Studies at Varying Spatial and Temporal Scales."

The data presented includes four .xlsx spreadsheets, one per case study, and a validation folder that contains data files used for validation of the results in the appendix sections of the research paper. 

This paper investigates the potential link between changes in NASA's Black Marble VIIRS/NPP Gap-Filled Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Daily L3 Global 500m Linear Lat Lon Grid (VNP46A2) nighttime lights product (NTL), and human dynamics, particularly population counts and changes at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. We conducted analyses in four case studies at varying resolutions to explore the relationship of NTL data for population studies, including demographic research, disaster mitigation and adaptation planning, and infrastructure development. The analyses were conducted using different administrative geographies, including a refugee camp, a sub-national region, and a country. We compared changes in population counts, density, migration, and displacement against changes in daily, weekly, monthly, and annual NTL values. Our case study results demonstrate that out-migration does not always lead to a decrease in NTL. We found that rural population decline did not correspond to a decrease in NTL. Despite significant out-migration in many rural areas NTL remained largely unchanged. NTL provided essential information on infrastructure damage in the short-term aftermath of this disaster; however, NTL alone was not correlated to the location of displaced individuals. Through news reports we were able to corroborate the NTL changes to downtimes of the electrical systems. Monthly NTL averages were highly correlated to population counts, but a pixel-level analysis showed the changes in NTL were primarily attributed to economic diversification. In summary, NTL is the product of several factors including demographic, environmental, economic, and political forces that shape electricity infrastructure, and we suggest NTL data must first be parameterized with ancillary ground-level information in order to be effectively applied to population models.

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