Spatial Structure Identification of Urban Agglomeration in Liaoning Province Based on Luminous Data and Graph Theory

Abstract

In order to be able to describe the boundary and evolution of urban agglomeration in Liaoning in real time and quantitatively, this paper designs and implements a method to identify the spatial structure of urban agglomeration based on nighttime light data and graph theory. The neighborhood extreme value method is used to identify the feature points, and the hydrological analysis method is used to indirectly extract the feature lines, then construct the nighttime light intensity map. The innovative graph theory is applied to the node clustering set detection of the nighttime light intensity map, and the agglomeration characteristics of cities are discovered by establishing the geographic mapping relationship between nodes and cities. In this paper, major cities in Liaoning, China, are taken as the study area, and NPP/VIIRS (NPOESS Preparatory Project/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer) data in 2016 and 2020 are used. The experimental results prove that the development momentum of southern Liaoning is stronger, the central Liaoning absorbs part of the western Liaoning, and the western Liaoning further shrinks.