Can We Rely on Viirs Nightlights to Estimate the Short-Term Impacts of Natural Disasters?

Abstract

Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nightlights are used to model damage caused by earthquakes, floods, and typhoons in five Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). The data are used to examine the extent to which for each type of hazard there is a difference in nightlight intensity between affected and nonaffected cells based on (i) case studies of specific disasters, and (ii) fixed effect regression models akin to the double difference method to determine any effect that the different natural hazards might have had on the nightlight value. The results show little to no significance regardless of the methodology used, most likely due to noise in the nightlight data and the fact that the tropics have only a few days per month with no cloud cover.