# Leveraging Compact Satellite Embeddings and Graph Neural Networks for Large-Scale Poverty Mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01408 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01408/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [Fast Graph Representation Learning with PyTorch Geometric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02428/) (2019)
- [AlphaEarth Foundations: An embedding field model for accurate and efficient global mapping from sparse label data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22291/) (2025)
- [TerraMind: Large-Scale Generative Multimodality for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11171/) (2025)
- [Statistical modeling: the three cultures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04570/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Earth Embeddings as Products: Taxonomy, Ecosystem, and Standardized Access](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13134/) (2026)
- [Detecting and Mitigating Treatment Leakage in Text-Based Causal Inference: Distillation and Sensitivity Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02400/) (2025)
- [Earth Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.03410/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate, fine-grained poverty maps remain scarce across much of the Global South. While Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) provide high-quality socioeconomic data, their spatial coverage is limited and reported coordinates are randomly displaced for privacy, further reducing their quality. We propose a graph-based approach leveraging low-dimensional AlphaEarth satellite embeddings to predict cluster-level wealth indices across Sub-Saharan Africa. By modeling spatial relations between surveyed and unlabeled locations, and by introducing a probabilistic "fuzzy label" loss to account for coordinate displacement, we improve the generalization of wealth predictions beyond existing surveys. Our experiments on 37 DHS datasets (2017-2023) show that incorporating graph structure slightly improves accuracy compared to "image-only" baselines, demonstrating the potential of compact EO embeddings for large-scale socioeconomic mapping.