The detection of natural cities in the Netherlands—Nocturnal satellite imagery and Zipf’s law

Die Abgrenzung natürlicher Städte in den Niederlanden: Nachtsatellitenbilder und das Zipf-Gesetz

Rolf Bergs

Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, 2018, vol. 38, issue 2, No 1, 140 pages

Abstract: Abstract How to detect the true extent of cities in highly urbanized countries? This paper addresses the delineation of natural urban and non-urban space and its change based on a wider understanding of spatial heterogeneity. The Netherlands is selected as a case study. “Natural” means the extent of urban space irrespective of administrative boundaries. The database, used for this study, is radiance-calibrated nocturnal satellite imagery from the Defence Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Extraction of cities is done by K-means segmentation. Based on the variance of luminosity it is possible to detect natural urban space. After removal of outliers in the skewed pixel distributions and after correction of “blooming” (over-glow of light emission) Zipf’s law is then applied as a test for segmentation adequacy. The comparative analysis for the years 1996 and 2011 shows that the rank-size distribution of natural cities is well confirmed by Zipf’s law, in contrast to that of administrative cities.

Keywords: Natural cities; Segmentation of space; Satellite imagery; Zipf’s law; O 18; R 12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10037-018-0122-6

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