Proville, JeremyZavala-Araiza, DanielWagner, Gernot2017-05-012017Proville, Jeremy, Daniel Zavala-Araiza, and Gernot Wagner. 2017. “Night-time lights: A global, long term look at links to socio-economic trends.” PLoS ONE 12 (3): e0174610. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0174610. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174610.http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:32630623We use a parallelized spatial analytics platform to process the twenty-one year totality of the longest-running time series of night-time lights data—the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) dataset—surpassing the narrower scope of prior studies to assess changes in area lit of countries globally. Doing so allows a retrospective look at the global, long-term relationships between night-time lights and a series of socio-economic indicators. We find the strongest correlations with electricity consumption, CO2 emissions, and GDP, followed by population, CH4 emissions, N2O emissions, poverty (inverse) and F-gas emissions. Relating area lit to electricity consumption shows that while a basic linear model provides a good statistical fit, regional and temporal trends are found to have a significant impact.en-USPhysical SciencesChemistryChemical CompoundsCarbon DioxidePhysicsElectricityEcology and Environmental SciencesEnvironmental EconomicsSocial SciencesEconomicsEngineering and TechnologyMechanical EngineeringEnginesComputer and Information SciencesComputer ApplicationsCatalogsSocial sciencesPolitical scienceUnited NationsEconomic AnalysisPeople and PlacesGeographical LocationsAsiaChinaJournal Article2017-05-0110.1371/journal.pone.0174610