scholarly journals Analyzing Pixel-Level Relationships between Luojia 1-01 Nighttime Light and Urban Surface Features by Separating the Pixel Blooming Effect

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 4838
Author(s):  
Ji Wu ◽  
Zhi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Yang ◽  
Xi Li

Nighttime light (NTL) remote sensing data can effectively reveal human activities in urban development. It has received extensive attention in recent years, owing to its advantages in monitoring urban socio-economic activities. Due to the coarse spatial resolution and blooming effect, few studies can explain the factors influencing NTL variations at a fine scale. This study explores the relationships between Luojia 1-01 NTL intensity and urban surface features at the pixel level. The Spatial Durbin model is used to measure the contributions of different urban surface features (represented by Points-of-interest (POIs), roads, water body and vegetation) to NTL intensity. The contributions of different urban surface features to NTL intensity and the Pixel Blooming Effect (PIBE) are effectively separated by direct effect and indirect effect (pseudo-R2 = 0.915; Pearson correlation = 0.774; Moran’s I = 0.014). The results show that the contributions of different urban surface features to NTL intensity and PIBE are significantly different. Roads and transportation facilities are major contributors to NTL intensity and PIBE. The contribution of commercial area is much lower than that of roads in terms of PIBE. The inhibitory effect of water body is weaker than that of vegetation in terms of NTL intensity and PIBE. For each urban surface feature, the direct contribution to NTL intensity is far less than the indirect contribution (PIBE of total neighbors), but greater than the marginal indirect effect (PIBE of each neighbor). The method proposed in this study is expected to provide a reference for explaining the composition and blooming effect of NTL, as well as the application of NTL data in the urban interior.

Author(s):  
Qian Chen ◽  
Tingting Ye ◽  
Naizhuo Zhao ◽  
Mingjun Ding ◽  
Zutao Ouyang ◽  
...  

Nighttime light imageries are widely used for mapping the gross domestic product (GDP) over large areas. However, nighttime light imagery is inappropriate to disaggregate agricultural GDP and inadequate to differentiate the GDP from the secondary and tertiary sectors. Points-of-interest, a kind of geospatial big data with geographic locations and textual descriptions of the category, can effectively distinguish industrial and commercial areas, and therefore have the potential to improve the precise GDP mapping from secondary and tertiary sectors. In this study, a machine learning method, random forest, was used to disaggregate the 2010 county-level census GDP data of mainland China to 1 km × 1 km grids. Six Random Forest models were constructed for different economic sectors to explore the non-linear relationships between various geographic predictors and GDP from different sectors. By fusing points-of-interest of varying categories, the spatial distribution of economic activities from the secondary and tertiary sectors was effectively distinguished. Compared to previous studies, the strategy of developing specific Random Forest models for different sectors generated a more reasonable distribution of GDP. Our results highlight the feasibility of using point-of-interest data in disaggregating non-agricultural GDP by exploiting the complementary features of the different data sources.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2818
Author(s):  
Hai Sun ◽  
Xiaoyi Dai ◽  
Wenchi Shou ◽  
Jun Wang ◽  
Xuejing Ruan

Timely acquisition of spatial flood distribution is an essential basis for flood-disaster monitoring and management. Remote-sensing data have been widely used in water-body surveys. However, due to the cloudy weather and complex geomorphic environment, the inability to receive remote-sensing images throughout the day has resulted in some data being missing and unable to provide dynamic and continuous flood inundation process data. To fully and effectively use remote-sensing data, we developed a new decision support system for integrated flood inundation management based on limited and intermittent remote-sensing data. Firstly, we established a new multi-scale water-extraction convolutional neural network named DEU-Net to extract water from remote-sensing images automatically. A specific datasets training method was created for typical region types to separate the water body from the confusing surface features more accurately. Secondly, we built a waterfront contour active tracking model to implicitly describe the flood movement interface. In this way, the flooding process was converted into the numerical solution of the partial differential equation of the boundary function. Space upwind difference format and the time Euler difference format were used to perform the numerical solution. Finally, we established seven indicators that considered regional characteristics and flood-inundation attributes to evaluate flood-disaster losses. The cloud model using the entropy weight method was introduced to account for uncertainties in various parameters. In the end, a decision support system realizing the flood losses risk visualization was developed by using the ArcGIS application programming interface (API). To verify the effectiveness of the model constructed in this paper, we conducted numerical experiments on the model's performance through comparative experiments based on a laboratory scale and actual scale, respectively. The results were as follows: (1) The DEU-Net method had a better capability to accurately extract various water bodies, such as urban water bodies, open-air ponds, plateau lakes etc., than the other comparison methods. (2) The simulation results of the active tracking model had good temporal and spatial consistency with the image extraction results and actual statistical data compared with the synthetic observation data. (3) The application results showed that the system has high computational efficiency and noticeable visualization effects. The research results may provide a scientific basis for the emergency-response decision-making of flood disasters, especially in data-sparse regions.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 3971
Author(s):  
Gabriel Silva de Oliveira ◽  
José Marcato Junior ◽  
Caio Polidoro ◽  
Lucas Prado Osco ◽  
Henrique Siqueira ◽  
...  

Forage dry matter is the main source of nutrients in the diet of ruminant animals. Thus, this trait is evaluated in most forage breeding programs with the objective of increasing the yield. Novel solutions combining unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and computer vision are crucial to increase the efficiency of forage breeding programs, to support high-throughput phenotyping (HTP), aiming to estimate parameters correlated to important traits. The main goal of this study was to propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach using UAV-RGB imagery to estimate dry matter yield traits in a guineagrass breeding program. For this, an experiment composed of 330 plots of full-sib families and checks conducted at Embrapa Beef Cattle, Brazil, was used. The image dataset was composed of images obtained with an RGB sensor embedded in a Phantom 4 PRO. The traits leaf dry matter yield (LDMY) and total dry matter yield (TDMY) were obtained by conventional agronomic methodology and considered as the ground-truth data. Different CNN architectures were analyzed, such as AlexNet, ResNeXt50, DarkNet53, and two networks proposed recently for related tasks named MaCNN and LF-CNN. Pretrained AlexNet and ResNeXt50 architectures were also studied. Ten-fold cross-validation was used for training and testing the model. Estimates of DMY traits by each CNN architecture were considered as new HTP traits to compare with real traits. Pearson correlation coefficient r between real and HTP traits ranged from 0.62 to 0.79 for LDMY and from 0.60 to 0.76 for TDMY; root square mean error (RSME) ranged from 286.24 to 366.93 kg·ha−1 for LDMY and from 413.07 to 506.56 kg·ha−1 for TDMY. All the CNNs generated heritable HTP traits, except LF-CNN for LDMY and AlexNet for TDMY. Genetic correlations between real and HTP traits were high but varied according to the CNN architecture. HTP trait from ResNeXt50 pretrained achieved the best results for indirect selection regardless of the dry matter trait. This demonstrates that CNNs with remote sensing data are highly promising for HTP for dry matter yield traits in forage breeding programs.


10.29007/92l9 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Vega-Viviescas ◽  
David A. Zamora ◽  
Erasmo A. Rodríguez

The Magdalena-Cauca macro-basin (MCMB) in Colombia, by its tropical location, annually experiences the effects of movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and it is highly affected by interannual macro-climatic phenomena, such as El Niño– Southern Oscillation (ENSO). With the aim of increasing the use of global reanalysis and remote sensing data for supporting water management decisions at the watershed scale and within the framework of the eartH2Observe research project, the aridity index (AI) was calculated with three different data sources. Precipitation products and AI results were compared with their corresponding in-situ national official data. The comparison shows high correlations between the AI derived from observed data and AI obtained from the reanalysis, with Pearson correlation coefficients above 0.8 for two of the products investigated. This shows the importance of using global reanalysis data in water availability studies on a regional scale for the MCMB and the potential of this information in others macrobasins in Colombia including the Orinoquia and Amazon regions, where in-situ data is scarce.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kang Wu ◽  
Xiaonan Wang

The brightness of pixels in nighttime light images (NTL) has been regarded as the proxy of the urban dynamics. However, the great difference between the pixel values of NTL from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (Suomi NPP/VIIRS) poses obstacles to analyze economic and social development with NTL in a continuous temporal sequence. This research proposes a methodology to align the pixel values of both NTL by calibrating annual DMSP images between the years 1992–2013 with a robust regression algorithm with a quadratic polynomial regression model and simulating annual DMSP images with VIIRS images between years 2012 and 2018 with a model consisting of a power function and a Gaussian low pass filter. As a result, DMSP annual images between years 1992–2018 can be produced. Case study of Beijing and Yiwu are conducted and evaluated with local gross domestic product (GDP). Compared with the values of DMSP and VIIRS annual composites, the Pearson correlation coefficients of DMSP and simulated DMSP annual composites in 2012 and in 2013 increase significantly, while the root mean square error (RMSE) decrease evidently. In addition, the correlation of the sum of light of NTL and local GDP is enhanced with a simulation process. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in narrowing the gap between DMSP and VIIRS NTL in pixel values.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Huang ◽  
Kaifang Shi ◽  
Huiming Zong ◽  
Tinggang Zhou ◽  
Jingwei Shen

Investigating regional connections and their influencing factors from the perspective of “flow” space is one of the foundations of promoting regional development. In this article, the data we used includes actual highway passenger flow data, National Polar-orbiting Partnership/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP/VIIRS) nighttime light remote sensing data, and socioeconomic data. We analyzed the spatial distribution pattern, connection intensity and spatial autocorrelation of highway passenger flow in Chongqing during the working day, weekend and May Day and revealed the influencing factors by means of a geographic detector. Three key conclusions resulted from this research. First, highway passenger flow in Chongqing districts exhibits spatial agglomeration that is clearly higher in western Chongqing than in eastern Chongqing and forms an obviously dual-core “star” structure, with the main urban area and Wanzhou serving as the core. Second, a factor detector notes that the nighttime light area index (0.9251, 0.9512, 0.9541) has the strongest explanatory power for the spatial differentiation of passenger traffic in Chongqing districts, which is the key factor. Third, interaction detection shows that the interaction between the two factors displays an enhancement effect at different times. The nighttime light area index shows the strongest explanatory power under the synergy of tourist attractions, which are 0.9850, 0.9903 and 0.9908. But the per capita GDP and highway mileage have the most obvious enhancement effect after interaction (0.9544, 0.9661, 0.9652). Therefore, in future planning and development, we should pay attention to cooperation and exchanges between districts and use the nighttime light area index as an important reference factor to provide a scientific basis for the construction of public transport and economic construction in Chongqing.


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