An estimation of housing vacancy rate using NPP-VIIRS night-time light data and OpenStreetMap data

ABSTRACTAs an informative proxy measure for a range of socio-economic variables, satellite-derived night-time light (NTL) data have been widely used to investigate the diverse anthropogenic activities and reveal urbanization development. Due to the rapid increase of Chinese urbanization rate, from 25.3% in 1987 to 58.5% in 2017, and ‘crazy expansion’ of city space, the sick phenomenon – ‘Ghost Town’ – has been brought out, generally defined as places with high housing vacancy rate (HVR), which will cause the huge waste of the limited land source in China. To investigate the HVR of urban areas in China, this study attempts to establish a hybrid model combining data derived from National Polar-Orbiting Partnership–Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) NTL sensors with OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. By distinguishing non-residential areas and introducing detailed residential building information, we proposed a novel HVR estimation model, thus realizing the estimation of HVR in 31 Chinese provincia...