Analysis of Urban Population Dynamics Based on Residential Buildings Volume in Six Provinces of Pakistan Using Operational Linescan System Sensors

Historically, an accurate knowledge of the size, behavior, and spatial distribution of the human population has been useful for understanding many social and political processes and phenomenon. The quality and availability of census data for a growing proportion of the world's population is continuing to deteriorate. Night lights have shown encouraging agreement between temporally stable lighted areas and the various definitions of urban extent. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Optical Line Scanner (DMSP-OLS) sensor of USA acquires images at night. Night-time satellite imagery is evaluated as a means of estimating the population of all the cities of the world based on their areal extent in the image. Models derived from night-time satellite imagery have the potential to dramatically improve our knowledge of the spatial distribution and intensity of human presence on the surface of the plane. The area of Pakistan is 881 913 km(2) having population of about 200 million (2015), which is equivalent to 2.57% of the world population. By using the known population of urban areas in every year (1992-2013), a total national population is also estimated using the regression analysis having r (2) = 0.87. Finally, we conclude that DMSP-OLS can be used to monitor the population and their activities.