Nighttime Light Remote Sensing Products for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 13
Special Issue Editors
Interests: nighttime lighting remote sensing; regional habitats assessment; spatial mapping
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: nighttime light imagery; urbanization; climate change mitigation; time series analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a global vision addressing the intertwined challenges of social equity, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Achieving these goals requires innovative data sources and analytical approaches that can provide consistent, timely, and globally comparable insights into human activity and its environmental consequences.
Nighttime light (NTL) remote sensing has emerged as a uniquely powerful tool in this context. By capturing the rhythms of human presence after dark, NTL observations offer unprecedented opportunities to monitor urbanization processes, energy consumption, socioeconomic development, and ecological impacts. Their long-term continuity, global coverage, and integration potential make NTL products an essential component of research and decision-making frameworks for advancing the SDGs.
The aim of this Special Issue is to gather innovative studies that advance both the methodology and application of NTL data. Topics of interest include sensor calibration and validation, the development of new NTL products, integration with socioeconomic and geospatial datasets, and applied research on urban dynamics, poverty and inequality, energy use and carbon emissions, ecological monitoring, and other sustainability challenges. Through these contributions, the Special Issue seeks to highlight the versatility of NTL observations and their potential to support interdisciplinary research and evidence-based policy.
By fostering collaboration across remote sensing, geoinformatics, and sustainability science, this Special Issue aspires to serve as a platform for advancing the frontiers of NTL research and to inspire innovative pathways toward achieving the SDGs.
Dr. Zihao Zheng
Dr. Qiming Zheng
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- nighttime light remote sensing
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- socioeconomic applications
- urbanization
- energy consumption and carbon emissions
- poverty and inequality assessment
- light pollution
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