Satellite Data for Economic Insights: Towards Tracking Automotive Production in Germany With Sentinel-1 for Economic Nowcasting

Kurzfassung

The increasingly dynamic nature of the global economy has heightened demand for real-time economic data, particularly during crises when traditional macroeconomic indicators have struggled to capture the extent of economic impacts. Innovative methods based on satellite remote sensing data have the potential to close this gap. This study investigates the potential of developing a novel economic indicator using Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar data to estimate production levels in the German automotive industry. Production parking lot occupancy is tracked at 18 domestic production sites to approximate production levels, leveraging openly available, semi-daily, high-resolution, and weather-independent satellite imagery for continuous monitoring. The analysis demonstrates a strong correlation of 0.74 between production parking lot occupancy and publicly available production figures, highlighting the method’s potential for near real-time economic insights. However, challenges remain in inferring production levels from production parking lot occupancy alone, especially in accurately capturing temporary production disruptions due to data limitations and site-specific variability. While the approach shows promise for complementing traditional economic measures, future research should refine the methodology and explore applications in other sectors, such as retail and tourism. Overall, this study underscores the potential of openly available remote sensing data for economic nowcasting, providing timely insights to support industry stakeholders and policymakers in data-driven decision-making in uncertain economic environments.