Estimation on regional intensity of economic activity in Asia : An application of noctural light image by DMSP/OLS

如今，亚洲国家的许多城市把经济发展放在优先位置，而不是环境问题，这导致了严重的环境恶化。显示城市地区发展阶段的信息通常仅限于政府公布的统计数据。特别是在亚洲发展中国家，由于缺乏数据积累，这一问题十分严重。因此，很难在一个共同标准下收集横断面城市环境指标。另一个问题是这些数据的可信度；许多现有数据据说是不可靠的。研究人员提出了一种替代方法；这是一种通过遥感收集信息并在地理信息系统上以行政区域为单位进行处理的方法。DMSP(防御性气象卫星计划)/OLS(作战直线扫描系统)稳定光图像(SLI)可用于探测低水平的可见光-近红外(VNIR；4-1.1μm)夜间被月光照亮的云的辐射度--城市、城镇和工业场所的灯光--气体耀斑--火灾等短暂事件--闪电照亮的云，分辨率为30秒。从大量的档案中，研究人员建立了1992-1996年亚洲地区的时间数据集，通过对这些数据集的分析，得出了亚洲经济危机(1997年)-印度和巴基斯坦交界区的压力-日本海(东海)渔业的时间变异性的影响。他们还将中国在每个省汇总的这些数据集与一些已发表的关于社会经济因素的统计数据进行了比较。夜间光照强度对GDP和用电量(Km2)具有很高的变化性。研究人员得出结论，DMSP/OLS SLI足以适用于评估城市地区的发展阶段，而没有任何公开的统计数据。

Nowadays many of the urban areas in Asian countries give more priority to economic development than to environmental issues, which leads to the serious environmental deterioration. Information showing developing stages of urban area are generally restricted to published statistics by governments. Especially in Asian developing countries the problem is severe because of the lack of data accumulation. Thus it is difficult to collect cross-sectional urban environmental indicators under a common criteria. Another problem is the credibility of those data; many of the existing data are said to be unreliable. The investigators proposed an alternative method ; it was a method to gather information through remote sensing, and processed it on the Geographic Information System in units of the administrative area.DMSP (Defensive Meteorological Satellite Program)/OLS (Operational Linescan System) Stable Light Image (SLI) is available to detect low levels of visible - near infrared (VNIR ; 0.4 - 1.1μm) radiance at night by- clouds illuminated by moonlight- lights from cities, towns and industrial sites- gas flares- ephemeral events such as fires- lightning illuminated cloudswith the resolution of 30 seconds.From the enormous archives, the investigators established temporal data sets in Asian region for 1992-3, 1996, 1998 and figured out impacts of- Asian economic crisis (1997)- stress in the marginal zone between India and Pakistan- temporal variability of fisheries in the Japan Sea (the Eastern Sea)through the analyses on these data sets.They also compared these data sets summed up in each province in China with some published statistics on socio-economic factors. Intensity of the nocturnal light showed high alterability for GDP and consumption of electricity (per km^2).The investigators concluded DMSP/OLS SLI was enough applicable to evaluate developing stages of urban area without any published statistics.