Modelling of Population Density in Urban Cities using VIIRS Night Time Light Data

Abstract

The changes in the number of population are one of the important measures for several activities such as land-use planning, environmental monitoring, construction design, soil, water and air quality observation. Urbanization accelerates the development of city and residential expansion. Proper planning of urban city needs a thorough observation to maintain good environmental and economic growth. This study was conducted to estimate and model urban population in five cities in Peninsular Malaysia (Ipoh, Johor Bahru, Klang Valley, Kuantan and Pulau Pinang) from night time light images. This image records the light intensity and helped in derive gridded urban population estimation from the number of light radiance acquired by Day/Night band of VIIRS sensor. The results show that the number of population estimation highly correlates to light intensity (R2>0.7). Validation of the polynomial model shows that the population density of estimated and actual population derived by censuses have high similarities and close into each other.