Investigating the Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of Human Development Index: A Comparative Study on Countries and Regions in the Eastern Hemisphere from the Perspective of Evolution

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a prevailing indicator to present the status and trend of sustainability of nations, hereby offers a valuable measurement on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Revealing the dynamics of the HDI of the Eastern Hemisphere countries is vital for measurement and evaluation of the human development process and revealing the spatial disparities and evolutionary characteristics of human development. However, the statistical data-based HDI, which is currently widely applied, has defects in terms of data availability and inconsistent statistical caliber. To tackle such an existing gap, we applied nighttime lights (NTL) data to reconstruct new HDI indicators named HDI_NTL and quantify the HDI_NTL at multispatial scales of Eastern Hemisphere countries during 1992-2013. Results showed that South Central Asia countries had the smallest discrepancies in HDI_NTL, while the largest was found in North Africa. The national-level HDI_NTL values in the Eastern Hemisphere ranged between 0.138 and 0.947 during 1992-2013. At the subnational scale, the distribution pattern of HDI_NTL was spatially clustered based on the results of spatial autocorrelation analysis. The evolutionary trajectory of subnational level HDI_NTL exhibited a decreasing and then increasing trend along the northwest to the southeast direction of Eastern Hemisphere. At the pixel scale, 93.52% of the grids showed an increasing trend in HDI_NTL, especially in the urban agglomerations of China and India. These results are essential for the ever-improvement of policy making to reduce HDI's regional disparity and promote the continuous development of humankind's living qualities. This study offers an improved HDI accounting method. It expects to extend the channel of HDI application, e.g., potential integration with environmental, physical, and socioeconomic data where the NTL data could present as well.