Night Time Lights

Satellite observations of night-time emitted lights describe a geography of the spatial distribution of resource use. Measurements of nocturnal lights enable the calculation of the total light emitted from each country of the world, and the light emitted per capita. We consider different groups of countries that share a land or maritime border and whose light per capita can be more equally/unequally distributed. A sharp difference in light per capita among neighboring countries reflects marked differences in economic welfare and in the extent of built environments. We demonstrate how this geography of nocturnal lights informs our understanding of the dynamics of conflict at the national and regional scale. We propose an index of regional disparity and test its ability to detect conflict dynamics by relating the index score with the occurrence and intensity of conflicts as classified by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research's Conflict Barometer 2012 for the countries of the world. This method can be used to produce a global available temporal sampling of "cold spots" of disparity where conflicts are likely to occur. This will help foresee the identification and monitoring of regions of the world,which are becoming particularly unstable, assisting in the definition and execution of timely and proactive policies.

We study the spatial distribution of the effect of oil and gas revenues on Brazilian municipalities, using variations in the international prices of oil and gas to establish causality. Oil and gas revenues increase economic activity, measured by night-time light emissions, in oil-producing municipalities but impose negative spill-overs on neighbouring municipalities. Spill-overs dominate beyond 150 km from oil activities and compensate direct effects in micro-regions. In oil municipalities, oil and gas revenues increase royalties, population, local real prices, crime, and real wages, essentially in manufacturing an d services. Spillovers are negative on wages and prices and positive on royalties and crime.

The purpose of this study is to determine the financial feasibility of electricity production projects in Colombia using thermal treatment technologies for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), by assessing the generation potential, the costs associated with investment, operation and maintenance of infrastructure, and the environmental impacts in terms of CO2 emissions. The study is developed for three capital cities that reflect different conditions of production and characteristics of the MSW, which are: Bogotá D.C., Cartagena and Manizales. MSW production volumes were determined from information reported by public sanitation service providers, while their lower calorific value was estimated from a predictive model referenced in the literature. The results of the study indicate that the development of these technologies, in the three cities mentioned, would allow to contribute 2.309 GWh/year, corresponding to approximately 3,3% of the electricity demand in Colombia; likewise, they would reduce CO2 emissions by more than 3 million tons per year, compared to the emissions generated by the final disposal of waste in sanitary landfills. The plant located in the city of Bogota would have the best financial performance, with an internal rate of return of 7,1%, while the infrastructure located in the cities of Cartagena and Manizales would not have an interesting financial performance; under the assumptions raised in the study.

The concept of urban area is complex and has been discussed for many years by several authors and organisations through different perspectives and methodological approaches. For administrative and comparison purposes statistical institutions, both at the national and international levels, classify territories according to a certain degree of urbanisation defining typologies from which indicators and certain public policies are applied. The purpose of this study is to discuss the relevance and suitability of different urban typologies. Through mapping and measuring the data of official documents, the urban dimension of Mainland Portuguese territory is discussed and its usefulness concerning the allocation of resources for promoting territorial cohesion is stressed. Results show the inadequacy of these classifications to inform planning actions, decision making, and to promote territorial policies. It also provides evidence of inaccuracies that distort the reading of the territorial r...

Landscape theory and its application have played an important role in natural resource exploitation and environmental protection. Various classification approaches had been employed worldwide in landscape ecology studies. This paper had developed a new hierarchical landscape classification framework for quantifying spatial pattern of Bac Kan province. A landscape formation equation was applied with three natural factors (geology, topography, and soil) and cultural factor (land use). A multi-level segmentation technique with multiresolution segmentation algorithm was chosen to segment landscape units (patches) and to categorize landscape types at different levels. The results revealed that the landscape classification of Bac Kan province has 4 hierarchical levels. Level 4, which provided full details of spatial pattern based on geologic period, elevation, soil depth, and land use, had 315 landscape types. At this level, there are 8,427 landscape units mapped with a minimum and maximum areas of 0.02 km 2 and 116.63 km 2 , respectively. A new Bac Kan landscape map at a scale of 1:100,000 along with 16 different attributes for each landscape unit was also produced. In conclusion, the framework of research methodology presented in this paper can be used as a guideline for landscape classification at provincial and national levels.

Inadequate electricity access limits human development and affects quality of life in Africa. Hence, the improvement of electricity access has become a cornerstone of the African energy policy. This study proposes the use of satellite derived data of nighttime lighting, population count and Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) to identify the driving factors for changing in electricity consumption in Africa between 2000 and 2013. The results of decomposition analysis indicated that population growth throughout the continent resulted in increased electricity consumption, while other factors had different effects. The results of this study could contribute to the design of better energy policy to achieve sustainable development of the continent.

Sub-Saharan Africa is considered a region with enormous economic and demographic potential. One of the main challenges it faces, included in the “Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, implemented by the African Union”, is to provide access to electricity. Currently, 600 million inhabitants of the African continent do not have access to electricity, which is a significant limiting factor for further economic growth and socio-economic development. Moreover, the measures taken by individual Sub-Saharan African countries appear insufficient in the face of rapid population growth. The aim of the article is to analyse the opportunities and challenges of the development of Sub-Saharan Africa’s energy sector. This raises the following research question: to what extent can a sustainable energy transition be achieved in sub-Saharan African countries to ensure access to electricity? The study used Ward’s hierarchical clustering method, classification and regression tree analysis, and the distance-w...

State capacity is a topic of interest in social sciences. Especially in developing countries such as Colombia, study of this topic could lead to strategic policies on how the central and local governments should focus their social and fiscal policies in order to enhance the welfare of the population. Also, it is always important to assess how the bureaucratic and security development has an impact on the economic level. As a country with a high concentration of economic activities in the capital city and in the capital regions, Colombia lacks state capacity over a significan portion of its territory. In this sense, studying the regional state capacity is important to understanding the regional differences present in Colombia.It is expected that where state capacity is high, the economic development is going to be as well. But, is this actually seen in the regions of Colombia?

The gradual spread of urbanization, the phenomenon known under the term urban sprawl, has become one of the paradigms that have characterized the urban development since the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The arrival of electrification to nearly every corner of the planet is certainly the first and more meaningful indicator of artificialization of land. In this sense, the paper proposes a new methodology designed to identify the highly impacted landscapes in China based on the analysis of the satellite image of nighttime lights. The night-lights have been used widespread in scientific contributions, from building human development indices, identifying megalopolis [2] [3] or analyzing the phenomenon of urbanization and sprawl [4], but generally they have not been used to forecast the urbanization in the near future. This paper proposes to study the urbanization impact in China between 1992 and 2013, and models a hypothesis of future scenarios of urbanization (2013-2025). For this purpose, the paper uses DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights (1992-2013). After obtaining a homogeneous series for the whole period 1992-2013, we proceed to model the spatial dynamics of past urbanization process using the "urbanistic potential" of each of the 13.7 millions of analyzed cells. This model allows to design a probable growth of the urbanization phenomenon between 2013 and 2025 as well to predict a progressive displacement of the urbanization from east coast to mainland and west, in congruence with the current demographic models [5].

The gradual spread of urbanization, the phenomenon known under the term urban sprawl, has become one of the paradigms that have characterized the urban development since the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. However, there is no unanimous consensus about what means "urbanization". The plurality of forms of human settlement on the planet difficult to identify the urbanization processes. The arrival of electrification to nearly every corner of the planet is certainly the first and more meaningful indicator of artificialization of land. In this sense, the paper proposes a new methodology based on the analysis of the satellite image of nighttime lights designed to identify the highly impacted landscapes worldwide and to build an index of Land Impacted by Light per capita (LILpc) as an indicator of the level of urbanization. The used methodology allows the identification of different typologies of urbanized areas (villages, cities or metropoli...

The gradual spread of urbanization, the phenomenon known under the term urban sprawl, has become one of the paradigms that have characterized the urban development since the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The arrival of electrification to nearly every corner of the planet is certainly the first and more meaningful indicator of artificialization of land. In this sense, the paper proposes a new methodology designed to identify the highly impacted landscapes in China based on the analysis of the satellite image of nighttime lights. The night-lights have been used widespread in scientific contributions, from building human development indices, identifying megalopolis [2] [3] or analyzing the phenomenon of urbanization and sprawl [4], but generally they have not been used to forecast the urbanization in the near future. This paper proposes to study the urbanization impact in China between 1992 and 2013, and models a hypothesis of future scenarios of urbanization (2013-2025). For this purpose, the paper uses DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights (1992-2013). After obtaining a homogeneous series for the whole period 1992-2013, we proceed to model the spatial dynamics of past urbanization process using the "urbanistic potential" of each of the 13.7 millions of analyzed cells. This model allows to design a probable growth of the urbanization phenomenon between 2013 and 2025 as well to predict a progressive displacement of the urbanization from east coast to mainland and west, in congruence with the current demographic models [5].

A thorough understanding of the mechanisms influencing electricity use is imperative for the implementation of energy scenarios. This study first explores Madagascar’s electricity consumption during the 1987–2015 period using a decomposition method. Next, a sensitivity analysis (SA) is conducted, which allows factors that have a significant influence on the different effects (activity, structure, and intensity) to be defined. Scenarios are then designed from regression models based on the SA. The main results revealed the following. (1) This study confirmed that the activity factor was the driving force of energy growth, accounting for more than 107.5% of the total electricity consumption. (2) The negative impacts of structural and intensity effects are particularly marked in periods of political disruption. (3) National energy policy (called “New Energy Policy” (NPE)) based scenario shows a significant electricity variation of 4084 GWh over the 2015–2030 period. By minimizing the i...

This paper presents the architecture design of flight dynamics system (FDS) known as "EMERALD" developed by Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) and Mahanakorn University of Technology (MUT). The capability of the system enables to provide the state vector of a satellite, mission analysis, orbit events and mission monitoring. The methodologies of orbit determination and event prediction modules implemented for mission management are presented and the validation is performed by comparing the prediction results with the performance of the mission operation. As a result of the implementation, the reduction of the operation time consumption is improved significantly and the prediction performance is high accurate and reliable when comparing with previous FDS (Quartz) developed by EADS ASTRIUM.

Inadequate electricity access limits human development and affects quality of life in Africa. Hence, the improvement of electricity access has become a cornerstone of the African energy policy. This study proposes the use of satellite derived data of nighttime lighting, population count and Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) to identify the driving factors for changing in electricity consumption in Africa between 2000 and 2013. The results of decomposition analysis indicated that population growth throughout the continent resulted in increased electricity consumption, while other factors had different effects. The results of this study could contribute to the design of better energy policy to achieve sustainable development of the continent.

Inadequate electricity access limits human development and affects quality of life in Africa. Hence, the improvement of electricity access has become a cornerstone of the African energy policy. This study proposes the use of satellite derived data of nighttime lighting, population count and Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) to identify the driving factors for changing in electricity consumption in Africa between 2000 and 2013. The results of decomposition analysis indicated that population growth throughout the continent resulted in increased electricity consumption, while other factors had different effects. The results of this study could contribute to the design of better energy policy to achieve sustainable development of the continent.