Nighttime Activity and Heat Exposure for Chinese Listed Firms, 2012-2019

A multiscale geospatial dataset links firm-level nighttime activity, daytime heat exposure, and warm-season nighttime microclimate for Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2019. The dataset, created by Changgao Cheng, provides daily, monthly, and annual panel data derived from satellite observations and meteorological fields. It is released under a CC-BY-4.0 license and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the impact of heat exposure on firm-level nighttime economic activity based on daytime heat metrics.
• Studying urban microclimate effects on human activity using warm-season nighttime microclimate indicators.
• Validating remote-sensing indicators of human activity by correlating VIIRS nighttime-light observations with firm locations.
• Investigating labor geography and work patterns by aligning activity data with official workday and holiday calendars.

Strengths

• Multiscale temporal resolution with daily, monthly, and annual panels from 2012 to 2019.
• Integrates multiple data sources, including VIIRS nighttime-light, ERA5-Land meteorological fields, and a 1 km daily land-surface-temperature product.
• Includes quality-control flags for data reliability assessment.
• Released as a structured ZIP archive with a size of 43.6 MB.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's spatial coverage is limited to Chinese listed firms, which may not be generalizable.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Changgao Cheng.

Collection Method

Firm locations used as spatial anchors to align daily VIIRS Black Marble nighttime-light, hourly ERA5-Land meteorological fields, a 1 km daily land-surface-temperature product, and official calendars.

Time Range

2012 to 2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-26 08:55:29; freshness should be verified.

Geography

China, focused on locations of listed firms.