We recently came across this interesting article which talks about how DigitalGlobe is applying AI to satellite imagery recognition.
Humans brains are still extremely useful, so DigitalGlobe also has a crowd-sourcing platform that can be used either on its own, or to train an artificial intelligence algorithm.
If you are interested in AI and satellite imagery then read the DigitalGlobe developer blog, which has a number of interesting articles, such as:
Detecting and measuring coastal change
Finding pools
Monitoring changes along pipeline routes
Detecting population centers in Nigeria
Detecting population centers in Nigeria. [Image: DigitalGlobe]
You can also sign up for a free evaluation account on DigitalGlobe’s AI platform GBDX.
Incidentally, we also found this comment in the article mentioned in the first paragraph above to be interesting:
DigitalGlobe also doesn’t release images of active U.S. combat areas.”
This at least partially explains the censorship (lack of imagery updates) of certain countries in Google Earth. It is not clear whether this is a decision made unilaterally by DigitalGlobe.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.