Deep learning methodology for predicting socioeconomic indicators in
Vale do Ribeira using satellite imagery
Abstract
Key measures of socioeconomic indicators are essential for making
informed policy decisions, but due to the high costs and operational
difficulties of traditional data collection efforts, obtaining reliable
socioeconomic data remains a challenge, particularly in developing
countries. This work presents a deep learning methodology to estimate
socioeconomic indicators using satellite imagery. The neural network
model developed was trained at the Brazilian region of Vale do Ribeira
with the goal of analyzing the socioeconomic indicator of income. The
preliminary results showed that models using nightlight (NL) or
multispectral daytime (MS) imagery performed better than models trained
only on RGB bands and that models trained exclusively on NL or MS
imagery performed similar to one another and nearly as well as the
combined model MS+NL. Finally, the model yielded a low performance (R2 =
0.289), but it is still promising once the dataset employed was
considerably smaller than the one used in the original study that
attempted to replicate.