When a farming operation wants to optimize crop yield, improve harvest quality and run its business more sustainably, they can look to their own data and tried-and-true approaches for answers. Similarly, an energy company that wants to detect risks to infrastructure and assets early to avoid potentially major disruptions can leverage their data. Or they can set their sights higher.
Today, companies in industries from agriculture to energy infrastructure, mining to wholesale distribution, insurance to consumer products, recognize that data collected by the constellations of satellites orbiting earth has immense strategic and operational value.
They can access satellite data — from synthetic aperture radar (SAR), high-cadence and ultra-high-resolution optical and thermal imagery, among various other sources — then combine or overlay it with other data (from internal sources such as IoT sensors, along with ERP and supply chain management systems, for example).
Agribusiness technology is helping companies make better decisions about crop inputs, which leads to more efficient, resilient, and sustainable production practices and more robust yields and profits.
Those insights have become more affordable for companies to access, according to an analysis by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey, which finds that “cost declines in state-of-the-art connectivity and data processing [around satellite-generated data are] making space technologies more economically viable for a wider range of businesses.”
Indeed, the use of satellite-generated data, often as part of an earth-observation-data-as-a-service (EODaaS) offering that comes with industry-tailored analytic capabilities, is already generating positive outcomes for companies across the industrial landscape.
The growing availability of space data “is creating opportunities that are enabling not just a small step but a giant leap” for the supply chain, transportation and mobility (SCTM) sector, WEF and McKinsey assert in their 2025 analysis. Fusing space data with data from IoT and other terrestrial sources, then applying AI and machine learning-driven analytics to that integrated data, can yield “hyper-accurate, second-by-second visibility” into shipments.
The impact on supply chains and shipping logistics will be nothing less than profound, they say. “This could be compared to flipping on billions of light switches in a previously dark room.”
As disruption-prone as supply chains are nowadays, satellite data is bringing a new level of clarity and resiliency to SCTM, helping companies deliver products to market more efficiently. For example, maritime shippers now have access to services that combine weather data from space with other data to find optimal routes based on factors like time, fuel cost and carbon emissions.
What’s more, shipping and trucking fleets can integrate space data with terrestrial data into vehicle telematics platforms. Using telematics with its vehicle fleet in India, the global freight company DHL reduced transit times by up to 50%, with 95% on-time delivery and reduced driver fatigue, according to the WEF and McKinsey report.
Instead of relying on conventional methods like LiDAR-based helicopter patrols, drone flights, and manual inspections to take stock of its infrastructure, National Grid turned to a service that combines satellite data with AI analysis. In a trial deployment, the utility was able to increase its trim cycle for pruning vegetation near electric lines from five years to almost six years.
San Jose Water is using a satellite-based wildfire solution for early detection and spread mapping.
Utilities also can use SAR-based services for near-real-time asset-level insights into natural disaster-related impacts on distribution, transmission, and other infrastructure to shorten response time and downtime.
The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC) is using a radar satellite-based solution that incorporates SAR data with optical satellite imaging, IoT sensor data on the ground and AI to identify potential risks across its pipeline network. An initial analysis detected methane emissions at five sites. Now the company can identify and address leaks it otherwise may not have identified, and do so faster than ever.
Gallo, the world’s largest winery, is employing satellite-generated thermal imagery and data in tandem with data from IoT sensors to optimize irrigation across thousands of acres in the Central Valley wine-making region of California. The result: a 25% reduction in water consumption, without compromising yield or the quality of its grapes.
Now, not only is the company aiming to push that reduction to 50% in years to come, the approach it helped pioneer is being adopted by other growers in the Western U.S. and elsewhere.
The reinsurance company MAPFRE RE is licensing near-real-time, high-resolution flood data to help it rapidly estimate losses and financial impacts across its reinsurance portfolios. The service will enable it to respond faster and more efficiently during flood-related disasters, while also supporting communication with key stakeholders as an event unfolds.
Satellite data (used in tandem with terrestrial data) is helping mining companies monitor tailings storage and other facilities more closely and proactively. Satellite data can detect wide-area surface displacement down to the millimeter without onsite equipment so companies can detect and address conditions that lead to collapses in the earliest stages.
Services like these are a driving the emerging space economy, which WEF and McKinsey project will grow from $630 billion in 2023 to $1.8 trillion by 2035. Even now, there’s a strong business case for companies to engage in the space economy as consumers of these EODaaS offerings.
