Abstract Remote sensing of night light emissions in the visible band offers a unique opportunity to directly observe human activity from space. This has allowed a host of applications including mapping urban areas, estimating population and GDP, monitoring disasters and conflicts. More recently, remotely sensed night lights data have found use in understanding the environmental impacts of light emissions (light pollution), including their impacts on human health. In this review, we outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state of the art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights. While the paper mainly focuses on space borne remote sensing, ground based sensing of night-time brightness for studies on astronomical and ecological light pollution, as well as for calibration and validation of space borne data, are also discussed. Although the development of night light sensors lags behind day-time sensors, we demonstrate that the field is in a stage of rapid development. The worldwide transition to LED lights poses a particular challenge for remote sensing of night lights, and strongly highlights the need for a new generation of space borne night lights instruments. This work shows that future sensors are needed to monitor temporal changes during the night (for example from a geostationary platform or constellation of satellites), and to better understand the angular patterns of light emission (roughly analogous to the BRDF in daylight sensing). Perhaps most importantly, we make the case that higher spatial resolution and multispectral sensors covering the range from blue to NIR are needed to more effectively identify lighting technologies, map urban functions, and monitor energy use.

中文翻译：

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夜灯遥感：回顾与展望

摘要 对可见波段夜光发射的遥感提供了从太空直接观察人类活动的独特机会。这使得许多应用成为可能，包括绘制城市地区地图、估计人口和 GDP、监测灾害和冲突。最近，遥感夜灯数据已用于了解光排放（光污染）的环境影响，包括它们对人类健康的影响。在这篇综述中，我们概述了夜间光学传感器的历史发展到现在最先进的传感器，突出了夜光数据的各种应用，讨论了与夜光遥感相关的特殊挑战，重点是局限性电流传感器，并为夜灯遥感的未来提供了前景。虽然该论文主要侧重于星载遥感，但也讨论了用于天文和生态光污染研究以及星载数据校准和验证的夜间亮度地面传感。尽管夜间光传感器的发展落后于白天传感器，但我们证明该领域正处于快速发展阶段。全球向 LED 灯的过渡对夜灯遥感提出了特殊挑战，并强烈强调了对新一代星载夜灯仪器的需求。这项工作表明，未来需要传感器来监测夜间的时间变化（例如来自地球静止平台或卫星群），并更好地了解光发射的角度模式（大致类似于日光感应中的 BRDF）。也许最重要的是，我们认为需要更高的空间分辨率和涵盖从蓝色到 NIR 范围的多光谱传感器，以更有效地识别照明技术、绘制城市功能图和监控能源使用情况。