Applications of nighttime light remote sensing for monitoring human health: a review

Light pollution, characterized by excessive or misdirected artificial light at night (ALAN), poses a significant threat to human health and environmental sustainability. Numerous studies examine light pollution’s health impacts, yet often overlook nighttime light (NTL) remote sensing’s critical role in elucidating these effects. This review synthesizes current applications of satellite-derived NTL data in monitoring human health impacts, highlighting its potential to elucidate ALAN-health relationships. From four databases (Web of Science, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Embase), we included 173 research articles, published up to May 2025, that utilize NTL satellite remote sensing data for human health studies for this review. Our review reveals epidemiological studies using NTL data increasingly link ALAN exposure to adverse health outcomes—including sleep disorders, obesity, depression, mental disorders, and cancer. However, a core limitation for NTL remote sensing is that health impacts stem mainly from indoor lighting, but NTL data measure only outdoor exposure. Additional challenges involve coarse spatial resolution, temporal mismatches, and limited spectral response. Future research must prioritize high-resolution multi-spectral NTL sensors, integration with medical-geospatial models, and methods to deduce indoor lighting patterns from satellite-derive NTL data.