20 years ago I did some software to analyze satellite images of the Amazon to monitor deforestation. We got a result that matched the quality of human experts. The problem has always been political and economical, not technological.
Curious to know what sort of methods you used then if you don't mind sharing.
The best results were with backpropagation neural networks: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0888613X949...
But we also used fuzzy logic neural networks with genetic algorithms: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/712156/?reload=true
It were 24 years ago.
There might be some interesting things that can be learned from this kind of info and applied to the current status quo (I'm definitely not arguing that there is a sociopolitical element).