Cities are constantly in transition, causing city-dwellers' needs to shift with them. In Colombia, researchers in the PEAK urban program are analyzing satellite imaging to improve urban life and make cities safer.
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00:00How much water does a city really need to keep its residents healthy and happy?
00:06How many parks are essential for a pleasant urban life?
00:09How many streets and bike routes ensure good traffic flow?
00:13As cities and demands change, informal settlements, unplanned and unauthorised housing areas can lead to limited access to infrastructure and basic services.
00:24At the University Iafit in Medellin, Colombia, researchers in the Peak Urban Programme are discovering the power of satellite images.
00:33By analysing these images, Juan Carlos Duque and his team were able to spot informal settlements in the city of Medellin.
00:40The images also allowed them to spot impoverished areas.
00:45We develop quantitative methods that allow us to generate variables from these images and to better understand society without making a single survey.
00:57The researchers trained a data model named Newton.
01:00This system analyses data to predict the future water requirements in a city based on urban growth projections.
01:08You download a series of historical photographs of the city you want to analyse for free
01:15and artificial intelligence, specifically neural networks, begin to understand the dynamics of that growth
01:21and can then make forecasts for the future of those urban spots.
01:29Satellite images also serve as a valuable tool for identifying informal markets trading outside of formal structures.
01:36This allows experts to monitor conditions for merchants, consumers and employees alike.
01:43The neural network was trained to detect more signs of commercial presence, like a storefront or merchandise on display.
01:51So we looked at millions of points over the city, processed them with this tool
01:56and then had new maps of the distribution of commercial activity within the city.
02:01The use of satellite images has also become crucial for the global challenge of sustainable urban mobility.
02:11Being able to use all these open sources of information in open software obviously allows us to reach new levels of complexity.
02:19We can even explore variables currently impossible to test with official information,
02:24but this data can really enhance our research processes.
02:29Analysing satellite images can be very useful in urban planning.
02:33To safeguard sensitive information, however, data security is crucial when using them.