Economic activity intelligence, EO-Atlas topic

Economic activity intelligence uses Earth-observation proxies to nowcast trade, production, logistics, and consumption where official statistics are delayed, sparse, or politically unreliable.^[1]

Night-time light radiance is the clearest satellite-native proxy: NASA Black Marble corrects VIIRS Day/Night Band observations for cloud, atmosphere, terrain, vegetation, snow, lunar, and stray-light effects, producing daily and composite night-light products suitable for human-activity analysis.^[2]^[3]

Optical and SAR time series add site-level evidence: ports, storage yards, construction sites, industrial plants, vessels, and storage tanks can be monitored for occupancy or change. These observations are activity indicators, not direct GDP measurements; they need calibration against ground truth, sector models, and known site inventories.^[1]

Commercial economic-intelligence products turn these proxies into sector indices. SpaceKnow, for example, offers satellite-derived manufacturing and logistics indicators built from detected changes at industrial locations.^[4]

What's available today

2 data products, 1 service and 73 sensors. Start with the most-used; switch to Filter for the full catalogue.

2 Data products

1 Services

73 Sensors

2 open

Data products

Open NASA Black Marble VNP46 Nighttime Lights

Open World Bank Light Every Night

Services & platforms — 1

SpaceKnow China Satellite Manufacturing Index SpaceKnow · ground

Advanced Baseline Imager GOES-16

Advanced Himawari Imager Himawari-9

AEISS-A KOMPSAT-3A

AI models & automation —

Antelope DPU —

BlackShore Satellite Imagery Forensics —

C-SAR Sentinel-1A

Capella X-band SAR Capella Space SAR constellation

CBERS-4 Multispectral Camera CBERS-4

CBERS-4 Panchromatic and Multispectral Imager CBERS-4

CBERS-4 Wide Field Imager 2 CBERS-4

CBERS-4A Multispectral CCD Camera CBERS-4A

CBERS-4A Wide Field Imager CBERS-4A

CBERS-4A Wide Swath Panchromatic and Multispectral Camera CBERS-4A

Class Location Monitoring —

Copernicus EMS On Demand Mapping —

COSI (Corea SAR Instrument) KOMPSAT-5

COSMIC-EYE Area Monitoring —

COSMIC-EYE Infrastructure Monitoring —

CSG-SAR COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation

ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) ECOSTRESS ISS deployment

Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) Meteosat-12

FY-4A Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager FY-4A

FY-4B Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager FY-4B

ICEYE X-band SAR ICEYE SAR constellation

Infrared Multispectral Scanner - 2 Huan Jing-2A

Jilin Imager Jilin-1

Marmoris Coastal Ecosystem Insights —

MeteoSAR Meteorological Synthetic Aperture Radar Meteor-M N2-4

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Terra

MONITORED AI —

MSS (KANOPUS) Kanopus-V

MSU-200 Kanopus-V

MSU-GS Electro-L Imager Electro-L N4

MSU-IK-SR Kanopus-V

MSU-MR VIS/IR Imaging Radiometer Meteor-M N2-4

NewSat multispectral camera Satellogic NewSat constellation

NISAR L-band SAR NISAR

NISAR S-band SAR NISAR

OpenAtlas RECON —

OpenAtlas TERRAIN —

Operational Linescan System DMSP-F18

PALSAR-2 ALOS-2

Panchromatic and Multi-spectral CCD Camera Gaofen-1 (GF-1)

PMS-2 Panchromatic and Multi-spectral CCD Camera Gaofen-2

PMS-3 high-resolution optical sensor SuperView / GaoJing constellation

Readar Change Detection —

Readar Solar Panel Detection —

RoadEO road quality monitoring and prediction —

SAR-2000 COSMO-SkyMed

SAR-C (EOS-04) EOS-04

SAR-C (Gaofen-3) Gaofen-3 (GF-3)

SAR-L (SAOCOM L-band SAR) SAOCOM-1A

SAR-X (RISAT-2 series) RISAT-2BR1

SARah active phased-array SAR SARah

SARah passive reflector SAR SARah

SLSTR (Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer) Sentinel-3A

SpaceKnow China Satellite Manufacturing Index —

SpaceView-24 BlackSky constellation

Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager Meteosat-10

StriX SAR Synspective StriX

Terraprisma ESG Monitoring and Compliance —

TerraSAR-X SAR TerraSAR-X

UMBRA-SAR Umbra SAR constellation

Wide Field Camera Gaofen-1 (GF-1)

Wide View CCD camera - 2 Huan Jing-2A

Sources

[1]Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Spacepeer reviewed2012-04-172026-06-08
[2]LAADS DAAC Nighttime Lights / NASA Black Marbleagency doc-2026-06-08
[3]NASA's Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suiteagency doc-2026-06-08
[4]SpaceKnow's China Satellite Manufacturing Indexoperator marketing-2026-06-08
[5]World Bank Light Every Nightoperator engineering-2026-06-08

How to cite this page

Plain text

Economic activity intelligence. EO-Atlas, SpectraWorks B.V. https://eo-atlas.org/topics/economic-activity (CC BY 4.0)

BibTeX

@misc{eoatlas:topics:economic-activity,
  title = {Economic activity intelligence},
  author = {{EO-Atlas}},
  publisher = {SpectraWorks B.V.},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
  url = {https://eo-atlas.org/topics/economic-activity}
}