ANALYSIS Mapping regional economic activity from night-time light satellite imagery Christopher N.H. Doll * , Jan-Peter Muller 1 , Jeremy G. Morley 1 Department of Geomatic Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom Received 19 December 2003; received in revised form 5 March 2005; accepted 7 March 2005 Available online 23 May 2005 Abstract The recognition that the elements of the danthropoceneT play a critical role in global change processes means that datasets describing elements of the socio-economic environment are becoming increasingly more desirable. The ability to present these data in a gridded format as opposed to the traditionally reported administrative units is advantageous for incorporation with other environmental datasets. Night-time light remote sensing data has been shown to correlate with national-level figures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Night-time radiance data is analysed here along with regional economic productivity data for 11 European Union countries along with the United States at a number of sub-national levels. Night-time light imagery was found to correlate with Gross Regional Product (GRP) across a range of spatial scales. Maps of economic activity at 5 km resolution were produced based on the derived relationships. To produce these maps, certain areas had to be excluded due to their anomalously high levels of economic activity for the amount of total radiance present. These areas were treated separately from other areas in the map. These results provide the first detailed examination of night-time light characteristics with respect to local economic activity and highlight issues, which should be considered when undertaking such analysis. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Night-time light satellite imagery; Economic activity; Geographic information; Mapping; Scale 1. Introduction The need to link human and natural physical sys- tems for a greater understanding of global change requires socio-economic datasets, which can be easily integrated with other sources of environmental data. Socio-economic data are usually provided on a national basis. While this is a convenient administra- tive unit to collect the data, it may be an inappropriate 0921-8009/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.03.007 * Corresponding author. Present address: Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia Univer- sity, 61 Route. 9W, P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964, United States. Tel.: +1 845 365 8963; fax: +1 845 365 8922. E-mail addresses: cd2167@columbia.edu (C.N.H. Doll), jpmuller@ge.ucl.ac.uk (J.-P. Muller), jmorley@ge.ucl.ac.uk (J.G. Morley). 1 Tel.: +44 20 7679 2740; fax: +44 20 7380 0453. Ecological Economics 57 (2006) 75 – 92 www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon