Poland’s fourth-largest city is among the first to seize on low-cost, high-precision images from space to catch property tax evaders, a plan that could bring in as much as $1 million a year and point the way for localities across the globe to track tax cheats.
And similar satellite-based projects led by the World Bank could transform property tax collection in megacities like Karachi, Pakistan—and literally put some newly developed areas of Nigeria on the map.
The opportunities arose from a confluence of factors in just the past few years: more private rockets carrying mini- and specialized satellites; high-resolution satellite...