Investigating the global socio-economic benefits of satellite industry and remote sensing applications

In recent years we have seen a growth in the revenues and investments of satellite industry. Originally, satellites, remote sensing (RS), and other navigations systems were only employed for government and military purposes. However, in the past two decades there has been an increase use of these tools for commercial purposes. In particular, satellites and RS can be used for space and earth observations, support military operations, precision agriculture, meteorological forecasting, communication and internet connectivity to lesser-known applications such as in transport tracking and monitoring of utility networks. In this paper, we analyse the current trends, benefits and limitations of the use of satellites and RS. In particular, we try to identify the main socio-economic benefits deriving from the use of RS in several sectors. We also seek to introduce economists to the science of RS data, and give a flavour of how this new fountain of data can be utilized so far and what might be done in the future.