Satellite Images Can Map Poverty (bbc.com) 120
A new study using satellite images and machine learning plans to map poverty from space in an effort to "fix the world's problems." Satellite imagery can be less dangerous, slow and expensive than gathering the data on the ground. BBC reports: "A team from Stanford University were able to train a computer system to identify impoverished areas from satellite and survey data in five African countries. The latest study looked at daylight images that capture features such as paved roads and metal roofs -- markers that can help distinguish different levels of economic wellbeing in developing countries. They then used a sophisticated computer model to categorize the various indicators in daytime satellite images of Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi. 'If you give a computer enough data it can figure out what to look for. We trained a computer model to find things in imagery that are predictive of poverty,' said Dr Burke. 'It finds things like roads, like urban areas, like farmland, it finds waterways -- those are things we recognize. It also finds things we don't recognize. It finds patterns in imagery that to you or I don't really look like anything... but it's something the computer has figured out is predictive of where poor people are.' The researchers used imagery from countries for which survey data were available to validate the computer model's findings." The results of the study are published in the journal Science.
Map them from orbit (Score:4, Funny)
It's the only way to be sure
Oblig XKCD (Score:2)
https://xkcd.com/1138/ [xkcd.com]
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Light is a measure of electrification, not poverty. Aridity is a measure of climate, not poverty. This imagery is more likely to do with travel patterns, etc. which do have unique relationships with poverty conditions.
Re:?This is new? (Score:5, Interesting)
Light is a measure of electrification, not poverty.
They are pretty much the same thing. Access to electricity is a huge boost to quality of life. Clean water and vaccinations are the only other things that even come close. When Medicines sans Frontiers builds a clinic in Africa, they first install the generator needed to run the clinic. In some cases, they installed the generator, but never built the clinic. Those villages had improved health outcomes almost as good as the villages with the clinics. Electricity gives people light without soot from candles or smoke from cookstoves. It gives them access to information via radio, TV, and phones. Refrigerated food means less waste and better nutrition. Children study longer. Farmers have access to crop prices. People stop gathering firewood and dung, freeing up time for productive activities, and eliminating a source of deforestation and erosion.
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Yes, absolutely, electricity is a primary factor. But not the only one. You don't want a binary value, you want to be able to measure and understand subtle differences in poverty, and why specific areas are in poverty or not. So, it's a combination of how much electricity, how many roads and of what type, what sort of water access there is, what sort of roof / infrastructure there is. Combine day and night images, and you have a much more refined measurement than just whether or not there is electricit
Metal roofs? (Score:1)
I don't have one.
They are expensive.
Altho, I didn't think i was living in poverty.
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And in the poor impoverished area - where did the roof come from?
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I rather suspect by "metal roof" they are referring to a sheet-metal roof, as opposed to a roof composed of formed metal shingles. The obvious "classic" here is the tin roof. I attempted to gauge the relative difference in cost, but traditional sheet-metal roofing does not appear to be readily available in .us: cheapest I found was pre-formed panels. Even so, formed panels appeared to be less than a quarter of the cost of formed metal shingles per unit area, One would suspect a roll of sheet metal, c
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A steel roof certainly costs more than the asphalt shingles used it the US. You might think using shingles was a sign of poverty, except that American homes are the size of African airport terminals.
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It's probably galvanized steel, a mid grade steel plated with zinc to prevent corrosion.
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It's probably galvanized steel, a mid grade steel plated with zinc to prevent corrosion.
Around here, zinc-galvanised corrugated steel has been mostly replaced by ZINCALUME® steel, which has a zinc/aluminium alloy coating.
Much shinier than aged zinc galvo, and looks a bit like aluminium. Probably what Locke saw in in Sierra Leone. Lasts much longer.
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My wife called the standard roof in Sierra Leone a "zinc" roof, but I believe it's just corrugated aluminum, not steel. Walls are usually concrete; apparently they don't insulate. I'm not sure what the poor people's huts use for roofs.
Sheet metal, if they can scrounge it, thatch if they can find it, tar paper, fiberglass panels or anything mostly flat and reasonably weatherproof when all else fails.
In drier climates, the roof, like the walls, can be made of mud (adobe), but then you have to be able to get enough support beams to plaster the mud over.
You make do with whatever you have. Whereas the more affluent have more choices.
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There's a difference between a metal roof made of regular metal panels treated to be corrosion-resistant and a metal roof made from hammering out junk automobile sheet metal, rusting corrugated panels, dismantled shipping containers, and whatever else one can find.
A very visible difference.
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You are thinking about 1st world metal roofs. Made to high standards for long life and corrosion resistant, and designed to look like other types of roofs, which can last decades longer than normal Shingles.
Then we have 3rd world metal roofs. You may see these in the States for our tool sheds, and other building that we use to protect inanimate objects from getting too wet in the rain. Low quality tin roof which is easy to setup still may be a bit more expensive than shingles. However the roof can be const
Re: Oh common...... (Score:5, Funny)
The irony in calling someone stupid and saying nothing else
Did you go to school with Alanis Morissette?
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If he did, then perhaps they both learned that the conditions making a situation ironic can be implied, rather than fully spelt out. Of course, that does require very slightly more intelligence on the part of the reader or listener, but I'm not in favour of dumbing down language to the lowest common denominator, so I'm all for it.
Yep... (Score:5, Funny)
...already knew that. And it's not quite as hard as they make out [american.edu].
Re:Yep... (Score:5, Funny)
predictive of where poor people are (Score:2)
What's the opposite of *follow the money*?
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Don't follow the money?
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Easy to do yourself at home. (Score:2)
Waste of resources. We already have this data. All you have to do is find any place for which Google Maps doesn't store full-resolution pictures.
Poverty (Score:1)
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When I first saw the headline I thought, oh they figured out you just have to spot the train tracks in any US cities and what's north of those is the poor area. That or using Google maps to overlay a chicken & waffle restaurants heatmap to spot the low income areas.
Now THAT would have been a sjw field day.
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What about in areas where the tracks run north south?
Which ever side is closest to the Mississippi. If you think I'm making this up look at a map of largest US cities.
A Thought (Score:2)
Couldn't similar technology be used to seek out hungry people and launch guided bananas at them?
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Re: A Thought (Score:1)
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http://imgur.com/gallery/7xO8Y
* sigh, not my creation unfortunately.
remote sensing discovers GIS (Score:1)
I always thought the GIS community was still too unfamiliar with remote sensing. Apparently it also is the case the other way round. They have made a spatial analysis of a classified remote sensing image. This has been done in a lot of fields. Geologists, hydrologists and other experts have been making maps using remote sensing images for some time. In this case they mapped the parameter "poverty".
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Can it map rich, single, older women? (Score:1)
Damn hard to find on the ground ...
Location isn't the problem (Score:3)
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I'll go out on a limb and say satellite imagery isn't going to make any of those more effective.
What they're trying to make more effective is the UN's control of resources. Whether the UN uses those resources effectively is a separate issue.
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I would think locating poverty isn't the problem. Do we really not know where the poor people are? The article is all about some huge international agency making a determination where best to send aid. I'll go out on a limb and say satellite imagery isn't going to make any of those more effective.
Here's a quote from the paper in question. Sure, we know where impoverished people are in a general sense. What we lack is the data required for effective decisions regarding aid and developmental assistance.
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After we locate them, what is the next step? (Score:3)
Once we have found the poor what is the next step? Drone Strike?
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Old news (Score:1)
Mapping poverty in Africa? (Score:2)
Looking down on the poor (Score:2)
post logic (Score:1)
Satellite imagery can be less dangerous, slow and expensive than gathering the data on the ground.
The opposite of less dangerous, slow and expensive is not the same as safer, faster and cheaper... although I think that is what you meant.
Phrasing things in the positive is usually not as less unclear.
Re:Basement View (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to check your timeline. Obama took office at the end of January, 2009. There were a million jobs lost in September and October of 2008, before the election took place.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/0... [cnn.com]
Or maybe you're suggesting that he destroyed the economy before he became president. Somehow. Sort of like how Rudy Guiliani says there were no terrorist attacks on US soil until Obama took office.
http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com]
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Also he was President Presumptive long before he was President Elect. The writing was on the wall and anyone who wasn't an outspoken supporter was branded a racist and was purged from society.
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The United States has never had a zero debt, nor is that even a particularly good idea, since the US debt is a good investment option and also stimulates the economy in a good way, as long as it is kept under control. Debt, in moderation, is good for a state to have.
What you mean is that Clinton did not have a budget deficit in some years. And that's a good thing for keeping your debt under control, but Clinton was also the primary Presidential beneficiary of being able to draw down after the Cold War. B
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Exactly. I think the rick are targeting Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi as the next hot location for a real estate boom.
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This imaging project has nothing to do with fixing poverty and everything to do with surveying real estate to find opportunities to make the rich even richer.
Can I ask what makes you think this? The paper this article references is a study on measuring poverty in the developing world. To quote the authors it uses "survey and satellite data from five African countries—Nigeria,Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Rwanda".
Re:THIS WHY FBI GET THE BIG BUCKS @ SLASHDOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Spend money on satellites to stare at poor people instead of giving them food.
Giving food to poor people in developing countries doesn't help fight poverty. Usually it makes things worse because growing and selling food is one of the few businesses that are possible for entrepreneurs in those areas, and they can't compete with the free food delivered by charities and NGOs and aid programs. Same for clothes.
The thing that takes people out of poverties is proper legal and financial structures. The day you find out how to achieve that (and not just replacing dysfunctional structures with corrupt ones) please email Bono and let him know.
So yes, in the meantime, studying poverty is the best alternative. It doesn't feed people but it doesn't fuck with their meager business opportunities either.
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Re: THIS WHY FBI GET THE BIG BUCKS @ SLASHDOT (Score:2)
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> The thing that takes people out of poverties is proper legal and financial structures.
so, to combat poverty, we should be sending them lawyers and investment advisors. .. i guess they could eat them.
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> The thing that takes people out of poverties is proper legal and financial structures.
so, to combat poverty, we should be sending them lawyers and investment advisors. .. i guess they could eat them.
Here's an example of something that actually happened in Haiti.
For generations there was an informal justice system in rural areas where a local person of social standing would be the equivalent of a sheriff. They were called "section chief" or something similar. It wasn't perfect but it worked.
Then the NGOs took over in the 90s, discarded this "antiquated and non-democratic" system and replaced it with police stations affiliated with the national police (because that's how "civilized" law enforcement shoul
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There's no reason why the availability of free food and/or clothing should limit the potential to grow other kinds of businesses. On the contrary,the less time you have to worry about food and clothing, the more time is available to explore other business ventures.
Why don't you provide more details about those "other business ventures"?
Just remember that this is a country where crime and corruption are rampant, where there is no reliable electrical grid, where access to clean water is a challenge, where there is no more trees and where there is a very poor network of roads and railways. And fuel is more expensive than in the USA, for people making on average $400 per year.
Of course thanks to helpful people like yourself it's no longer possible to make money there gro
Re:THIS WHY FBI GET THE BIG BUCKS @ SLASHDOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he and his family will starve become some rich/powerful asshole owns the lake, the boats and the bait and tackle shop and charges accordingly.
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"The World Bank, which keeps the poverty data, has for a long time considered anyone who is poor to be someone who lives on below $1 a day,"...
"For social welfare programmes, some of which already use satellite imagery to identify eligible recipients, higher-fidelity estimates of poverty can help to ensure that resources get to those with the greatest need."
Visit a Third World country some time, it will open your eyes. They're not talking about a small segment of the population living under bridges. They're talking about everyone in the village having nothing - no food, no housing, no water, nothing.