1. Using satellite imagery for poverty Monitoring
Summer School
July 19, 2017

2. Goals of session
To make you more comfortable with the idea of using satellite imagery in your work
To help you become familiar with:
What types of imagery exist
How imagery is processed to create indicators
What is known about the use of high spatial-resolution imagery (HSRI) for small area poverty estimation
How the WB Geospatial Operations Support Team (GOST) can help you.
What have I learned from working in this area?
Textural features (open-source)
Convolutional Neural Network (proprietary)
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3. Session will focus on: High spatial resolution daytime imagery
Generates much more accurate predictions than night time lights or other indicators based on low or medium resolution imagery
Can distinguish buildings
HSRI is rapidly becoming cheaper and more widely available
Small area estimation of welfare and poverty
Ignores important research on predicting agricultural yields, population counts, and other areas
Ignores use of imagery to look at welfare changes or “nowcasting”
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4. Agenda 2:20 to 2:35 Introduction to Imagery Keith Garrett (GOST)
Time
Session
Sepaker
2:20 to 2:35
Introduction to Imagery
Keith Garrett (GOST)
2:35 to 3:15
Texture features
Jordan Graesser (Boston University)
3:15 to 4:00
Convolutional Neural Networks and their application to poverty prediction
Tom Swartz (Orbital Insight)
4:15 to 5:15
Small area welfare estimation using high-resolution imagery
David Newhouse and Anusha Ramakrishnan (GPVDR)
5:15 to 5:45
How can the GOST help you?
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5. External experts Tom Swarz is a Data Scientist at Orbital Insight
Jordan Graesser is a geographer specializing in remote sensing
Expertise in using imagery to measure agricultural land use changes
Developer of the open-source “Sp.Feas” and “MapPy” software packages that processes texture features from imagery
Tom Swarz is a Data Scientist at Orbital Insight
Orbital insight is a leading firm specializing in the sale of real-time economic indicators derived from imagery.
Tom will give a BBL tomorrow to discuss Orbital Insight’s work and demonstrate Orbital Insight’s new “Proteus” user interface for generating indicators
Both Jordan and Tom have kindly made themselves available to meet with interested participants tomorrow morning
Sign up sheets will be circulated
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