Assessment of stable light derived from DMSP/OLS night-time imagery

A stable light image for south-eastern Asia was extracted from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) night-time imagery for 1999. The accuracy assessment of the stable light image has been completed using two methods: a reference data-based comparison and a stratified random sampling method. The stable light image was compared with the conventional stable light image for 1999 and the Landsat ETM+ 2000 image for the Kanto region of Japan. The results show that the digital numbers of the new stable light image (almost <20) in the non-urban area are much lower than those of the conventional stable light image (almost >60) because the new stable light image includes little noise. The stratified random sampling method could assess the accuracy for both the new stable light image and the conventional stable light image in Asia by classifying the images into stable and non-stable light areas. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.