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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.
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.
> 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.