Enhancing Cambodia’s Trade and Transport with Earth Observation

Cambodia faces multiple challenges in transport and logistics, including gaps in connectivity, ageing rail and river connections, and inefficiencies at ports and border crossings. These obstacles limit Cambodia’s ability to exploit the full potential of regional trade.

To address these issues, The World Bank’s Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice team, in collaboration with the GDA Transport & Infrastructure (T&I) activity, is assessing Cambodia’s logistics and transport challenges by providing data on border crossings, logistics assets, and cargo handling to develop strategies for more efficient trade and transportation systems. The GDA T&I consortium, led by SpaceKnow with support from DLR, used ESA Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to acquire satellite imagery, even through dense clouds. SpaceKnow developed a framework to detect metallic objects and measure their area, addressing potential data inaccuracies by creating a network of key traffic and supply chain locations.

SpaceKnow’s data, combined with DLR’s population analysis, has provided the World Bank with insights into Cambodia’s traffic and cargo supply chain, helping forecast future infrastructure needs to address traffic bottlenecks.

You can read more about this Case Study here: Bridging Gaps by Understanding Cambodia’s Transport and Mobility Patterns