Global urban characterization using population density, DMSP and MODIS data

This is study of urban characterization from coarse resolution satellite images. Urban environments are so heterogeneous. It is necessary to simplify them as combination of basic land cover materials in order to enable quantitative studies. A comparative analysis of three-component features (Population density, NDVI, DMSP) for 25 urban areas worldwide provides a physical basis of global urban characterization. The result of analysis indicate that the characteristics of there cities can be accurately described as linear combinations of population density, DMSP and vegetations end members within a two dimensional mixing space containing over 80% of variance in the observed data. Global urban characterizations provide a basis of mapping the spatial extent of human settlements using coarse resolution satellite imagery.