The researchers estimate that between 2020 and 2050, Africa’s population will exactly double – the population of urban areas alone will increase by 950 million. At the same time, local residents are acutely aware of the lack of affordable housing within the city, moving to other locations to form informal settlements. Google noted that, unfortunately, settlement data using conventional monitoring methods is almost impossible to track for adding to map services. Even advanced machine vision and remote sensing of the terrain can only recognize roads and large buildings, while other structures remain “invisible.”
To solve this problem, Google employees in the Open Buildings program decided to use artificial intelligence. Using this technology, the system creates digital prints of buildings, creating the outlines of rectangles in those locations where people decided to build new settlements from improvised means. To date, the program has added more than 500 million buildings to the map across the continent, most of which are less than 20 square meters. The information added to the database contains information about the location of the building, its size, and even a unique code is recorded. Unfortunately, it is not possible to enter a postcode or address for such buildings.
In addition, Google has explained why they are doing this at all. The fact is that when preparing a humanitarian response program, drawing up transport routes and other stages of planning the delivery of services, you need to have a complete map of the area. Without it, even large companies are problematic to conduct their activities in Africa.
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