Use case: construction and real estate

Planning supply chains by analysing global outdoor storage sites

Satellite imagery shows what lies in the open at storage sites, ports and supplier yards: stockpiles, containers, tanks and vehicles. Repeated images turn this into time series of activity, and machine learning can detect and count objects automatically. Combined with shipping data and your own figures, this helps plan supply chains for sites you cannot visit.

Reference
UC-16
Technologies
  • Earth observation
  • Artificial intelligence
Industry
Challenge
Supply chain and logistics
Updated
Published by
LETO SPACE

01When you need it

The task

Supply-chain planning depends on what is happening at sites far away: how much material sits at a supplier's yard, how full a port's storage areas are, whether production at a plant is running. Reports from suppliers and partners can arrive late, and some sites are rarely visited.

Much of this activity takes place in the open. Satellite imagery supports object counting for stockpiles at ports or silos, and 3D models support the quantification of inventories Source: EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), 26 May 2026EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA)EU Space Market Report 2026, Issue 126 May 2026Open source (opens euspa.europa.eu). Commodity traders monitor goods production and shipping at key locations to predict supply and demand, and Earth observation contributes to this Source: EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), 26 May 2026EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA)EU Space Market Report 2026, Issue 126 May 2026Open source (opens euspa.europa.eu). A company can apply the same approach to the sites its own supply chain depends on.

02Data

Which data shows activity at storage sites

DataWhat it showsExample
Very high resolution optical imagesSingle objects: stockpiles, containers, tanks, trucksPléiades Neo, 30 cm, revisit twice a day
High resolution optical imagesLarger changes in the area used for storageCopernicus Sentinel-2, 10 m, revisit five days, free
Radar imagesAcquisitions through clouds and at nightCopernicus Sentinel-1
Shipping dataVessel arrivals and departures at port sitesAIS position reports
Your own dataOrders, deliveries and stock figuresERP and supplier reports

Specifications from ESA for Pléiades Neo Source: European Space Agency (ESA), Earth Online, accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA), Earth OnlinePléiades Neoaccessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens earth.esa.int), Sentinel-2 Source: European Space Agency (ESA), accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA)Sentinel-2 (mission page)accessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens esa.int) and Sentinel-1 Source: European Space Agency (ESA), 3 November 2025European Space Agency (ESA)Sentinel-1 mission… did you know?3 November 2025Open source (opens esa.int); shipping data as used in the PSVE project Source: European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, 22 June 2023European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space SolutionsPSVE: dry bulk commodity stockpile monitoring at ports (ESA BASS project)22 June 2023Open source (opens business.esa.int). Copernicus data are free of charge Source: European Commission, DG Defence Industry and Space (EU Space portal), accessed 7 October 2026European Commission, DG Defence Industry and Space (EU Space portal)Copernicusaccessed 7 October 2026Open source (opens eu-space.europa.eu).

  • L1 Base mapTerrain, river and parcels
  • L2 PlantProduction halls, yard and stack
  • L3 Supply sitesOutdoor storage sites of suppliers
Illustrative map, not real data. Outdoor storage sites of suppliers around a plant, as a storage-site analysis would mark them.

03Technology

How the analysis works

  1. Select the sites: the supplier yards, ports and depots that matter for the planning decision.
  2. Collect images over time: a series of acquisitions for each site, at the resolution the objects require.
  3. Detect and measure: machine learning detects objects in the images and measures the area or volume in use. Research datasets for this task contain objects such as ships, storage tanks, harbours and large vehicles, which vary widely in scale, orientation and shape Source: CVPR 2018, Xia et al., IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2018, 2018Xia et al., IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2018DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images2018Open source (opens arxiv.org).
  4. Combine: the indicators are fused with other data. The PSVE project, for example, combined image classification with shipping data to estimate stockpile volumes at ports Source: European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, 22 June 2023European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space SolutionsPSVE: dry bulk commodity stockpile monitoring at ports (ESA BASS project)22 June 2023Open source (opens business.esa.int).
  5. Feed the plan: the indicators go into supply-chain planning as time series per site, next to the figures you already have.

How AI turns images into information in general is the topic of our use case on analysing satellite imagery with AI.

04Overview

Monitoring supplier sites

The same images help watch the sites a supply chain depends on. Satellite Earth observation can monitor whether supplier operations comply with environmental standards Source: European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space SolutionsESA Space Solutions: Space for land mobilityaccessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens business.esa.int), and ESA lists stockpile estimation among the applications for finance and insurance Source: European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space SolutionsESA Space Solutions: Space for finance and insuranceaccessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens business.esa.int).

When a flood or a fire hits a region with suppliers, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service can map the affected area and the damage to infrastructure within hours or days, although only authorised users can request an activation Source: Copernicus EMS, Copernicus Emergency Management Service, accessed 7 October 2026Copernicus Emergency Management ServiceAbout the Copernicus EMS On-Demand Mapping serviceaccessed 7 October 2026Open source (opens mapping.emergency.copernicus.eu). The service is described in rapid damage mapping after disasters; how exposure to such hazards is assessed in advance, in assessing climate risk for properties and assets.

05Deliverables

What you get

  • a time series per site of the area or number of objects in storage
  • alerts when an indicator moves outside a range you define, for example a supplier's stock falling below the usual level
  • one view of all monitored sites, including sites no one from your company visits
  • a record of events such as floods or fires that affected supplier sites

06Limits

Limits

  • Limit 01

    Only what lies in the open

    Satellites see stock that lies outside. Goods in warehouses, in closed containers or under roofs stay invisible, so the indicator describes outdoor storage only.

  • Limit 02

    Clouds hide optical images

    Optical images need a clear sky; radar satellites such as Sentinel-1 also acquire images through clouds and at night Source: European Space Agency (ESA), 3 November 2025European Space Agency (ESA)Sentinel-1 mission… did you know?3 November 2025Open source (opens esa.int). A service that relies on optical images alone will have gaps.

  • Limit 03

    Estimates need calibration

    Counts and volumes from images are estimates. They become reliable for planning once they have been compared with known stock figures for the same sites.

07Our work

Our client project in this sector

One of our four anonymised client projects covers this topic, in construction and real estate. It used Earth observation and AI.

08Next steps

How we help

Storage-site indicators are useful when they feed a planning decision. In strategy and use cases we check which sites and indicators answer your planning question and whether satellite data do this better than the reports you already receive. In implementation we run the pilot on a few sites and take the indicators into your planning routine.

The marketplace on Spacegraph, our discovery platform, has a use-case category for object detection and counting.

09Use cases

Frequently asked questions

Q1Which image resolution do we need to analyse a storage site?

It depends on what you need to tell apart. EUSPA notes that the resolution needed to distinguish assets on the ground differs widely between, for example, a large agricultural field and the stockpiles of an urban recycling site Source: EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), 2024EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA)EUSPA EO and GNSS Market Report, Issue 2, 20242024Open source (opens euspa.europa.eu). Free Sentinel-2 images have a resolution of 10 m Source: European Space Agency (ESA), accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA)Sentinel-2 (mission page)accessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens esa.int); commercial missions such as Pléiades Neo reach 30 cm Source: European Space Agency (ESA), Earth Online, accessed 6 October 2026European Space Agency (ESA), Earth OnlinePléiades Neoaccessed 6 October 2026Open source (opens earth.esa.int). The requirements should name the smallest object that matters for your decision.

Q2Can satellites measure the volume of a stockpile?

Estimates are possible. The ESA-supported project PSVE set out to quantify the volume of dry bulk commodities such as iron ore and coal held at large international ports. It applies machine learning to Sentinel-2, PlanetScope and very high resolution imagery and fuses the results with shipping data; it passed its final review in 2023 Source: European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, 22 June 2023European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space SolutionsPSVE: dry bulk commodity stockpile monitoring at ports (ESA BASS project)22 June 2023Open source (opens business.esa.int). Accuracy depends on the material, the site and the data, so a pilot should compare the estimates with known stock figures.

Q3How do we start?

Choose a small set of sites that matter for one planning decision, for example the yards of two critical suppliers, and define the indicator, such as the area covered by stock. Then compare a few months of satellite indicators with the figures you already have. Our consulting overview shows the path from the problem to operation.

Sources (11)

  1. EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), 26 May 2026EU Space Market Report 2026, Issue 1 (opens euspa.europa.eu)
  2. EU Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), 2024EUSPA EO and GNSS Market Report, Issue 2, 2024 (opens euspa.europa.eu)
  3. European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, 22 June 2023PSVE: dry bulk commodity stockpile monitoring at ports (ESA BASS project) (opens business.esa.int)
  4. Xia et al., IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2018, 2018DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images (opens arxiv.org)
  5. European Space Agency (ESA), accessed 6 October 2026Sentinel-2 (mission page) (opens esa.int)
  6. European Space Agency (ESA), Earth Online, accessed 6 October 2026Pléiades Neo (opens earth.esa.int)
  7. European Space Agency (ESA), 3 November 2025Sentinel-1 mission… did you know? (opens esa.int)
  8. European Commission, DG Defence Industry and Space (EU Space portal), accessed 7 October 2026Copernicus (opens eu-space.europa.eu)
  9. European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, accessed 6 October 2026ESA Space Solutions: Space for finance and insurance (opens business.esa.int)
  10. European Space Agency (ESA), ESA Space Solutions, accessed 6 October 2026ESA Space Solutions: Space for land mobility (opens business.esa.int)
  11. Copernicus Emergency Management Service, accessed 7 October 2026About the Copernicus EMS On-Demand Mapping service (opens mapping.emergency.copernicus.eu)

Contact

Which storage sites does your supply chain depend on? List them, and we check what satellite images can show.

Prefer to talk?

Tell one of our experts about your project. Together we work out where you stand, whether satellite data and AI can help and what a sensible next step would be.

Both calls are free of charge and take place online. You choose a date in our booking calendar.