Satellite data for urban green space and agri-environmental statistics

Purpose and goal 

In SATDES, Statistics Sweden and RISE are exploring how satellite data can be integrated into routine statistical production, focusing on urban green space and crop residues on farmland. Statistics Sweden decides what needs to be measured and whether the results meet the bar for official statistics. RISE develops methods and data pipelines. 

Challenge 

Statistics on urban green space in Sweden are updated only every few years, even though our cities change faster than that. Information on crop residues comes from surveys that farmers complete, which Statistics Sweden then processes. Statistics Sweden needs to deliver more with fewer resources. 

Solution 

The Sentinel-2 satellites pass over Sweden every few days. RISE has built a pipeline that combines a full season of images into a yearly vegetation map, showing how green each 10-metre pixel gets at its peak, and turns it into green area statistics and change maps for any region. Since weather and growing conditions affect how green vegetation appears from one year to the next, a new thresholding method keeps the line between green and non-green consistent, so changes on the map reflect real changes on the ground. The pipeline runs on Digital Earth Sweden, the national platform for Earth observation data built by RISE and the Swedish National Space Agency. A national map for 2023 showed that it scales to all of Sweden. 

On farmland, the question was different: can a satellite tell whether residues were left on a field after harvest? RISE trained AI models on satellite time series, using Statistics Sweden’s survey answers as ground truth. Early results suggest it can, and the next step is testing across more regions and years. Two master’s students at Stockholm University, co-supervised by RISE, extended the work using radar data, which can see through clouds. 

Effect 

SATDES shows that satellite data can enable annual statistics, thereby reducing the need for farmer surveys and lowering production costs. The methods could help other European statistical agencies and strengthen Digital Earth Sweden as shared national infrastructure. In May 2026, the project was presented at the StatEO 2026 conference at ESA’s ESRIN centre in Frascati, Italy. In August 2026, the team met with Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), which runs a similar Eurostat-funded GEOS project, to exchange knowledge on satellite-based statistics and innovative methodologies.