China commands 47% of remote sensing research, while U.S. produces just 9%, NYU Tandon study reveals

The United States is falling far behind China in remote sensing research, according to a comprehensive new study that tracked seven decades of academic publishing and reveals a notable reversal in global technological standing.

China now accounts for nearly half of all peer-reviewed journal publications in this critical field, while American output has declined to single digits.

"This represents one of the most significant shifts in global technological leadership in recent history," said Debra Laefer, the lead author of the study. Laefer is a NYU Tandon Civil and Urban Engineering professor, and a faculty member of Tandon’s Center for Urban Science + Progress.

Published in the journal Geomatics, the research analyzed over 126,000 papers published between 1961 and 2023 to document how China has surged from virtually no presence from the 1960s through the 1990s to 47% of remote sensing publications by 2023, while the United States has dropped from producing 88% of research in the 1960s to only 9% today.

Remote sensing — the science of gathering information from a distance using technologies like laser scanning, imagery, and hyperspectral imagery from the ground, the air, and even space — underpins critical applications from autonomous vehicles to climate monitoring and national security.

The global market was valued at $452 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $1.44 trillion by 2030, making leadership in this field essential for economic competitiveness. Laefer emphasized that understanding who drives technical expertise and funding in this area is "of national and international importance, as they are inextricably linked with intellectual property generation, which is also shown in our data."

The research reveals that remote sensing scholarship has experienced exponential growth, expanding from roughly a dozen papers annually in the 1960s to more than 13,000 per year by 2023, a thousand-fold increase that far outpaces general scientific publishing trends.

Laefer and co-author Jingru Hua — at the time a master’s student in the NYU Center for Data Science — attribute this surge to decreased equipment costs, greater global participation, digital-only publishing, and most significantly, the adoption of artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning and deep learning.

Perhaps most notable for American competitiveness, the research demonstrates a near-perfect correlation between national funding and publication output. China's National Natural Science Foundation now appears in funding acknowledgments for over 53% of remote sensing papers published between 2021 and 2023, while U.S. agencies are credited in only 5%.

The study identified six Chinese funding entities among the top ten global funders in recent years, compared to only two American organizations, NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). NASA, once the dominant funder at 50% of publications through the 1990s, has been vastly outpaced by Chinese funding organizations. Notably, NSF does not have dedicated divisions specifically for geomatics (the science of gathering and analyzing geographic data) or geodesy (the science of measuring Earth's shape and positions on it).

China's research dominance extends to intellectual property generation as well. According to patent data included in the study, China now accounts for the majority of remote sensing patents filed globally. In just the three years from 2021 to 2023, over 43,000 patents containing "remote sensing" were filed worldwide, with China responsible for the clear majority, a dramatic reversal from the late 20th century when the United States held near-total dominance.

The researchers' analysis of publication titles reveals evolving technological priorities. Early decades focused heavily on satellite imagery, but recent years show explosive growth in artificial intelligence techniques, with terms like "deep learning" and "machine learning" now dominating publication titles. The number of papers mentioning these techniques has grown exponentially, reaching over 80,000 publications by 2023.

The findings have implications for technological competitiveness. Remote sensing capabilities underpin emerging technologies including augmented reality, autonomous navigation, and digital twins, all important areas for economic and commercial applications. With China's continued investment and the field's commercial value expected to triple by 2030, the study provides a baseline for understanding shifts in this important technological domain.