sensing · methodologies

Nightlights radiometry

Measures calibrated night-time visible to near-infrared radiance from low-light imagers, supporting economic activity, electrification, outage, urbanisation, and light-pollution analyses.

Nightlights radiometry measures night-time upward radiance from artificial and natural light sources using low-light visible/NIR imaging. VIIRS Day-Night Band products improved calibration and spatial resolution over DMSP-OLS, while Black Marble adds corrections for lunar illumination, atmosphere, clouds, snow, and other confounders.^[1]^[2] It is a strong proxy for economic activity and infrastructure state, but it misses unlit activity and can be biased by lighting technology, saturation, fires, aurora, moonlight residuals, and viewing geometry.

Sources

[1]Nighttime Lightsagency doc2026-06-08
[2]NASA VIIRS Land Products: Black Marbleagency doc2026-06-08

Cite https://eo-atlas.org/methodologies/nightlights-radiometry Markdown twin → Field definitions →