Disaster Monitoring through NASA's Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suite
Abstract
Continued access to electricity is essential for our health, well-being, and social productivity. Failure to restore power supply for an extended period could lead to a cascade of detrimental social, economic, and health consequences after blackouts due to disasters. Lengthy power outages following disasters such as hurricanes inflict far more fatalities in the long run than direct impact from disasters itself due to unsanitary living conditions. NASA's Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suite (VNP46), due to its automated collection, daily global coverage, and ability to capture data at the source, has been successfully used for disaster monitoring through rapid disaster response as well as long-term impact monitoring. Black Marble products correct the extraneous sources of noise in the observed nighttime light radiance signals and are available on daily, monthly, and annual composite scales. The Blue/Yellow false composite, built with Black Marble nighttime light (NTL) radiance and thermal band, is available through NASA's Worldview portal to quickly identify the cloud conditions and quality of the observed nighttime light images. The Black Marble High-Definition Products (BMHD), a visualization product, at the characteristic scale of urban processes (~30m) is being generated allowing users to monitor seasonal and long-term NTL changes within cities, while also enabling visual assessment of specific sectors that are impacted by abrupt changes caused by disturbances in power delivery. Tools to generate these BMHD products will soon be released publicly through Google Earth Engine platform.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFMNH31B..04S