Whenever a place is hit with a disaster, it can completely alter the way it looks. And if you¡¯re someone from a disaster management team who¡¯s trying to provide aid to the affected region, a maps service like Google Maps is your messiah.?
And sure, in most cases, Google Maps has been present to make things convenient. However, there are many places that aren¡¯t yet mapped by Google Maps or any mapping services yet -- areas in rural regions of the world?
India is one of the many countries that has rural areas disconnected from metros and cities. These villages might not even have access to continuous electricity, let alone access to internet or cellular network. Places like this, when are impacted by a natural disaster can cause a lot of inconvenience for disaster management teams -- something that the nation witnessed during floods in Kerela, Bihar or during Cyclone Fani in Odisha.
So in order to eliminate this, Intel partnered with American Red Cross to map unmapped locations, taking the help of artificial intelligence.
According to the co-founder of Missing Maps and CEO of American Red Cross Dale Kunce, ¡°As someone who¡¯s been on the ground with the Red Cross, having access to accurate maps is extremely important in disaster planning and emergency response. But there are entire parts of the world that are unmapped, which makes planning and responding to disasters much more difficult. This is why we¡¯re collaborating with Intel to use AI to map vulnerable areas and identify roads, bridges, buildings and cities.¡±
Satellite images, in general, are very complex to read, with numerous elements in the way and roads and bridges are different in every nation.?
Intel¡¯s AI (powered by 2nd gen Xeon processors with DL Boost and nGraph) model simulates mapper¡¯s abilities and detects elements that human eyes would have otherwise missed, and completed tasks faster than a human mapper with better accuracy. They found 70 bridges in Southern Uganda that were missing not just in OpenStreetMap but also in Ugandan Bureau of Statistics¡¯ map.
Intel doesn¡¯t own the complete rights to the dataset. However, it is exploring ways to open-source the dataset for researchers and the geospatial community. It is also going to conduct workshops to teach the use of satellite imagery and AI.