# Estimating the Impact of COVID-19 on Travel Demand in Houston Area Using Deep Learning and Satellite Imagery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27486 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27486/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02165/) (2018)
- [Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00133/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Deep Learning-based Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09408/) (2019)
- [A Large Contextual Dataset for Classification, Detection and Counting of Cars with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.04453/) (2016)
- [A Survey on Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06201/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning for Pavement Condition Evaluation Using Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01206/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Considering recent advances in remote sensing satellite systems and computer vision algorithms, many satellite sensing platforms and sensors have been used to monitor the condition and usage of transportation infrastructure systems. The level of details that can be detected increases significantly with the increase of ground sample distance (GSD), which is around 15 cm - 30 cm for high-resolution satellite images. In this study, we analyzed data acquired from high-resolution satellite imagery to provide insights, predictive signals, and trend for travel demand estimation. More specifically, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 in the metropolitan area of Houston using satellite imagery from Google Earth Engine datasets. We developed a car-counting model through Detectron2 and Faster R-CNN to monitor the presence of cars within different locations (i.e., university, shopping mall, community plaza, restaurant, supermarket) before and during the COVID-19. The results show that the number of cars detected at these selected locations reduced on average 30% in 2020 compared with the previous year 2019. The results also show that satellite imagery provides rich information for travel demand and economic activity estimation. Together with advanced computer vision and deep learning algorithms, it can generate reliable and accurate information for transportation agency decision makers.