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Satellite Images Can Map Poverty (bbc.com)
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.
It's the only way to be sure
You can also tell poverty by satellite images by looking at the amount of light in a area at night or the dryness of the land. Except for Dubai, Las Vegas and various palaces around the middle east where the oil barons live, people living in the desert are in poverty too simply because theres barely anything for them to exploit.
I don't have one.
They are expensive.
Altho, I didn't think i was living in poverty.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
...mapping something does not fix it. It just quantifies the problem. Quantifying is very laudable, but to actually fix the problem will require things that the affected countries may not be willing to do. First, let's tackle the issue of corruption. Then tackle the problem of people/organization only giving the important jobs to friends/family/religious group (i.e. NOT giving jobs to people who are actually qualified for that job). THEN lets see if the people in charge actually work for the betterment of the country and not for themselves. And all these things are doubly true in a third world country like Africa.
...already knew that. And it's not quite as hard as they make out.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
What's the opposite of *follow the money*?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Our totally scientific satellite imaging methods found some more coders to recruit! Cheapest coders! Get em here!
What money? usdebtclock.org
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...
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...
You are welcome on my lawn.
He was a Senator, so also culpable.
Why would you distance yourself up in space, then try to work out poverty from outside the earths atmosphere by satellite photographs? Is poverty contagious? Why on earth would you assign poverty to GPS locations? That would represent an average poverty/richness in that zone and be totally useless when dishing out welfare.
Take any Google map and you'll see supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, AND slums intermixed. The slums are there because the jobs and money are there. The jobs and money are there because there are richer people there. It's NOT A FUNCTION GPS LOCATION.
You would not decide on welfare based on a course GPS cell map.
"The assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote: "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.""
Ahh, OK, professor wants to play with satellites and computers and make the world a better place..... from a distance....without getting his hands dirty. Plus they don't have decent Latte Maciato in Africa.... do they?... they have lions and tigers and mud huts.... he researched that on discovery channel.... but no Starbucks.
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.
If it is really helpful to identify the Poor from those countries it is good....
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.
Yeah, it's not like Obama increased the national debt by 9 trillion dollars, doubling the national debt. That definitely didn't happen!
When the economy tanks again, and it will, it will be devastating.
What a wonderful outlook you have on life, stop blaming the president for your problems.
IDIOT
Just map the number of cars up on blocks per square mile and you'll get near perfect correlation to poverty. The greater number of cars the greater the poverty. The old metric of satellite dish per square mile (the more the poorer) is unfortunately no longer relevant.
15 years of warfare will do that, especially with costs still to be billed for extended care of veterans. Besides, I doubt you are capable of understanding enough to know that it has no actual impact on the economy outside of political grandstanding that stops other services.
Purged from society? Come on. There are still people who are outspoken detractors after eight years of his doing a pretty good job. You're not going to disappear if you malign Obama, although it's getting to the point I wish you would disappear.
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.
lucm, indeed.
Profiling is taking a person you don't know and assuming stuff about them without testing the validity of the assumption.
I suppose it is possible that an entire neighborhood of patchwork construction of a shoddy nature might be the place where the rich people are, but it is doubtful. This is much closer to observation than profiling. They're not saying much about anything except where the poorer areas are located, as observed.
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.
lucm, indeed.
There are still people who are outspoken detractors after eight years of his doing a pretty good job.
Yet you make the most of any opportunity to kiss Obama's ass. You wouldn't want to take the risk of being accused of racism yourself. Always approve of your Dear Leader and fortune will smile upon you.
Give a person food and they can eat for a day, teach a person to feed and they can eat for a lifetime.
Case in point: there used to be a textile (clothing) industry in Africa, but there isn't anymore, because it's cheaper to ship bails of used clothing collected in the US to Africa than it is to manufacture clothing there. Ever notice in pictures the African natives are always wearing t-shirts that refer to obscure American locations?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So, you're A-OK with Bush increasing the debt from zero (left by Clinton) to 9 billion, but that a-hole Obama increasing from 9 billion to 18 billion while paying for Bush's wars means Obama is incompetent? Conservatard "logic" is very strange...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Couldn't similar technology be used to seek out hungry people and launch guided bananas at them?
Spend money on satellites to stare at poor people instead of giving them food.
Well of course! How else are we supposed to give food to poor people if we don't know where all the poor are hiding?
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".
Thought not. RACE is the number one predictor of poverty, but this article (and most of the cretins on Slashdot) appear to believe that LAND MASSES magically make one group of people more intelligent than another. LOL.
> 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.
Ah, someone who has no idea that debt and deficit are different concepts.
Learn a bit
Clinton left 5.6 billion of debt, G.W. Bush left 10 billion, and so far Obama has already pushed that to 18 billion.
Deficit (what Clinton had 0 of for a brief period) is merely the excess federal spending on a given year.
Looking back a little further
We can see that Clinton only added 1.6 billion, so of the last 3 presidents, his term was marked with the least spending beyond revenue. G. H. W. Bush added 1 billion, but that was only 4 years while the rest of these examples have been 8 (or 7).
It's generally naive to credit or blame a president for the net difference between tax returns and government spending, as there are many factors that go into either, but if you're going to argue from a position of naivety, at least have some facts on your side.
So we know who to build walls around to keep them out.
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.
Or they are wearing championship shirts with the losing team on them. Manufacturers make shirts with both teams on them for games like the super bowl and world series so they can start selling them as soon as the game is over. All the shirts with the wrong team get sent to Africa.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Can easily identify poverty here in the U.S. All you need to see is a liquor store, family dollar, a title pawn and at least one place that sells nothing but 22" rims.
This has fuck nothing to do about helping a systemic social problem. There a plenty of homeless people living under bridges, in all major cities, that those satellite won't see. People that do see them, don't want to, or are emotionally blind anyway.
One is cumulative, the other is simply for a period. Next time try not picking for-profit firms with vested interests, and don't copy pasting shit you don't really understand you fucking idiot. Also your numbers are wrong - Bush Jr. left 11.6 Billion Debt, Obama has added 6.5 Billion in what is now an equal amount of time. The CBO is leaning increasingly conservative but those are the official figures from them, check the link.
Funny...that's what happens when the current administration takes the two wars being paid for by emergency measures (the govmnt equivalent of a credit card) and puts that debt on the books.
Exactly. I think the rick are targeting Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi as the next hot location for a real estate boom.
Damn hard to find on the ground ...
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
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.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
https://xkcd.com/1138/
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Once we have found the poor what is the next step? Drone Strike?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A large part of the Clinton presidency coincided with the dot com bubble, which boosted federal income for a while. Bush had to deal with the aftermath of the crash.
I don't know why this is news. Givedirectly.org has been doing this for years. (https://www.givedirectly.org/operating-model)
Given the absolute poverty that overwhelmingly covers the Continent, it would be better to map areas WITHOUT poverty as they are few and far between (even Libya has a 33% poverty rate).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Don't teach a man to fish, and feed yourself. He's a grown man, and fishing isn't that hard" - Ron Swanson
What about in areas where the tracks run north south?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
"bales", not "bails".
I guess ivory towers are outdated.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
He didn't say developing countries he said poor people. There are poor people in the US too. 1st world country USA.
You don't study poverty as any best alternative to anything. You don't even think? Do you not check if what you say makes sense first?
It is called decide. It is not called study. Do you prefer to have starving people in your country? Then you decide to study poverty.
Do you not prefer to have starving people in your country? Then you reign in the corruption that prevents it. One example would be starve the folks who make satellites to stare at poor people. After a period of starvation they might have a better "study" than to build satellites and stare at poor people.
You seem like you eat from your ass.
Sure, but major differences in severity. While both were recessions, dot-com one was in a single industry, the financial derivatives one was in the industry controlling the growth of every other one.
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. Bush or not, there was never going to be a situation where we would never be in another war again, so no matter which major party candidate was in office in 2001, we were going to be fighting at least one war and running up a bill for it after that date.
Bush Jr Tax Cuts. The gift that keeps on giving
I think the BBC needs to look in a dictionary for the difference between "predictive" and "indicative".
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".
> 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 should be). The people staffing those stations are usually young men from urban areas with zero knowledge of the local culture and no appreciation of the rural lifestyle, and have alienated the population with endless scandals of corruption and brutality. Now the poor people have no protection against crime, instead they have to deal with corrupt cops.
Then there was the earthquake. Following that, boatloads of free stuff started to arrive in Haiti. Rice, flour, clothes, shoes. And not just the basic stuff. Also car parts, machine tools, generators, solar panels, plumbing hardware. This drove countless Haitian companies, big and small, out of business. Guess what: those people are now penniless and hungry.
The result is that since the NGOs have been involved in Haiti there's been a constant increase in poverty, crime, corruption and violence. But yeah, keep sending your grain and your used clothes and your advisors to "fight hunger". It won't actually help, it will make things worse, but *you* will feel better, that's what matters.
lucm, indeed.
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 growing food, making clothes, repairing cars, building houses, manufacturing generators or making solar panels. Education and healthcare are also out. There's little or no resources to mine. And the weak financial system is flooded with small loans startups financed by foreigners.
What's left? Selling arts and craft on etsy? Creating wordpress themes? Opening sushi bars? Golf courses? Tattoo parlors?
Please elaborate.
lucm, indeed.
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.
lucm, indeed.
And Clinton was the one that deregulated the banks and repealed Glass-Stegall. Not to mention made the situation much worst with his free trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO and GATT.
Sure, Bush didn't help any, but Clinton is directly to blame.
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.