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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-M-7-2025-253-2025</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Assessment of economic well-being in South Africa based on remote sensing transfer learning</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Longfei</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Long</surname>
<given-names>Tengfei</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Adam</surname>
<given-names>Elhadi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100094, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>25</day>
<month>05</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-M-7-2025</volume>
<fpage>253</fpage>
<lpage>258</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Longfei Wang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-M-7-2025/253/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-M-7-2025-253-2025.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-M-7-2025/253/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-M-7-2025-253-2025.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-M-7-2025/253/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-M-7-2025-253-2025.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-M-7-2025/253/2025/isprs-archives-XLVIII-M-7-2025-253-2025.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Persistent socio-economic and environmental inequalities pose major challenges to sustainable development in the global South. However, comprehensive and spatially clear data on environmental conditions and socio-economic well-being remain scarce, preventing a thorough analysis of intersecting inequalities. This study assesses economic well-being and its relationship to environmental factors in South Africa by proposing a method for analysing environmental and socio-economic inequalities using remote sensing data and transfer learning, using publicly available satellite imagery and statistics. We take the established correlation between nighttime light intensity and economic activity and propose a framework to analyze it in parallel with environmental indicators derived from daytime satellite imagery. Our approach centers on training convolutional neural network (CNN) models to extract economic and environmental features from high-resolution daytime satellite data. CNNS are trained to predict nighttime light intensity, act as proxies for economic activity, while learning to recognize environmental features. Patterns indicating economic activity and environmental conditions can be identified from daytime images alone. By linking the extracted features to known socio-economic indicators obtained from census data and surveys, a spatially clear map of South Africa&apos;s economic well-being and environmental quality was created.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="6"/></counts>
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