Uncovering large inconsistencies between machine learning derived gridded settlement datasets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sekara, Vedran, Martini, Andrea, Garcia-Herranz, Manuel, Kim, Do-Hyung
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Sekara, Vedran
Martini, Andrea
Garcia-Herranz, Manuel
Kim, Do-Hyung
author_facet Sekara, Vedran
Martini, Andrea
Garcia-Herranz, Manuel
Kim, Do-Hyung
contents High-resolution human settlement maps provide detailed delineations of where people live and are vital for scientific and practical purposes, such as rapid disaster response, allocation of humanitarian resources, and international development. The increased availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, combined with powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, has spurred the creation of a wealth of settlement datasets. However, the precise agreement and alignment between these datasets is not known. Here we quantify the overlap of high-resolution settlement map for 42 African countries developed by Google (Open Buildings), Meta (High Resolution Population Maps) and GRID3 (Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development). Across all studied countries we find large disagreement between datasets on how much area is considered settled. We demonstrate that there are considerable geographic and socio-economic factors at play and build a machine learning model to predict for which areas datasets disagree. It it vital to understand the shortcomings of AI derived high-resolution settlement layers as international organizations, governments, and NGOs are already experimenting with incorporating these into programmatic work. As such, we anticipate our work to be a starting point for more critical and detailed analyses of AI derived datasets for humanitarian, planning, policy, and scientific purposes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_13127
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uncovering large inconsistencies between machine learning derived gridded settlement datasets
Sekara, Vedran
Martini, Andrea
Garcia-Herranz, Manuel
Kim, Do-Hyung
Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
High-resolution human settlement maps provide detailed delineations of where people live and are vital for scientific and practical purposes, such as rapid disaster response, allocation of humanitarian resources, and international development. The increased availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, combined with powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence, has spurred the creation of a wealth of settlement datasets. However, the precise agreement and alignment between these datasets is not known. Here we quantify the overlap of high-resolution settlement map for 42 African countries developed by Google (Open Buildings), Meta (High Resolution Population Maps) and GRID3 (Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development). Across all studied countries we find large disagreement between datasets on how much area is considered settled. We demonstrate that there are considerable geographic and socio-economic factors at play and build a machine learning model to predict for which areas datasets disagree. It it vital to understand the shortcomings of AI derived high-resolution settlement layers as international organizations, governments, and NGOs are already experimenting with incorporating these into programmatic work. As such, we anticipate our work to be a starting point for more critical and detailed analyses of AI derived datasets for humanitarian, planning, policy, and scientific purposes.
title Uncovering large inconsistencies between machine learning derived gridded settlement datasets
topic Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.13127