Remote Sensing for Short-Term Economic Forecasts

Abstract

Economic forecasts are an important instrument to judge the nation-wide economic situation. Such forecasts are mainly based on data from statistical offices. However, there is a time lag between the end of the reporting period and the release of the statistical data that arises for instance from the time needed to collect and process the data. To improve the forecasts by reducing the delay, it is of interest to find alternative data sources that provide information on economic activity without significant delays. Among others, satellite images are thought to assist here. This paper addresses the potential of earth observation imagery for short-term economic forecasts. The study is focused on the estimation of investments in the construction sector based on high resolution (HR) (10–20 m) and very high resolution (VHR) (0.3–0.5 m) images as well as on the estimation of investments in agricultural machinery based on orthophotos (0.1 m) simulating VHR satellite imagery. By applying machine learning it is possible to extract the objects of interest to a certain extent. For the detection of construction areas, VHR satellite images are much better suited than HR satellite images. VHR satellite images with a ground resolution of 30–50 cm are able to identify agricultural machinery. These results are promising and provide new and unconventional input for economic forecasting models.

6+: A Novel Approach for Building Extraction from a Medium Resolution Multi-Spectral Satellite

“…This monitoring can be done with the latest development in Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing technologies. For example, the urban expansions happening in an area require monitoring and management, including the identification of densely populated or slum areas and understanding their social-economic condition [2], identifying the legal or illegal buildings in an area, building height estimation, identification of areas that are suitable for deployment of industries, the insurance and tax assessment of an area based on the population density [3], the estimation of population count based on the built-up areas [4], the identification of places in urban areas for green parks and artificial lakes, and short-term economic forecasts [5]. Apart from that, another more important area is the use of renewable resources, such as the sun for energy supply.…”