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Sentinel-2 image of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with container terminals, ships and the surrounding city.

Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, 29 October 2025

Geospatial intelligence in finance

Monitoring economic activity from space.

Satellite imagery gives financial analysts and investment firms a near real-time view of economic and market trends. High-resolution optical and radar imagery can follow commercial infrastructure, the movement of goods through supply chains and even retail trade.

Signals from orbit

Cars in retail car parks [1], shipping at ports [2] and emissions from factories [3] can all be measured from space, and they’ve become proxies for how companies are performing. Asset managers now build these signals into their forecasting models and adjust their portfolios on the strength of them [1][4].

Whole economies

The International Monetary Fund has used satellite data to help monitor the economies of fragile states, Somalia among them [5]. Because the data covers the whole country and is collected often, the IMF could follow key economic indicators across Somalia [5]. Signals like these have become proxies for the health of whole economies, as well as of companies [6].

References

  1. Katona, Z., Painter, M., Patatoukas, P. N. and Zeng, J. On the Capital Market Consequences of Big Data: Evidence from Outer Space. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 60(2), 551 to 579, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022109023001448
  2. Arslanalp, S. and others. Nowcasting Global Trade from Space. IMF Working Paper, International Monetary Fund, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5089/9798229009294.001
  3. Parubets, S. and Naito, H. Predicting economic activity using atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) satellite data: Evidence from local economic indicators in Japan. PLOS One, 20(12), e0337901, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337901
  4. Mukherjee, A., Panayotov, G. and Shon, J. Eye in the sky: Private satellites and government macro data. Journal of Financial Economics, 141(1), 234 to 254, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.03.002
  5. International Monetary Fund, Middle East and Central Asia Department. Harnessing Satellite Data for Economic Monitoring in Fragile States: Application to Somalia. IMF Staff Country Reports, 2024/347, December 2024. https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2024/347/article-A003-en.xml
  6. Henderson, J. V., Storeygard, A. and Weil, D. N. Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space. American Economic Review, 102(2), 994 to 1028, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.2.994