AI is responsible for 60% of all internet traffic this morning, OP is the other 40%.
But on a serious note this is an interesting project highlighting the sheer volume of power usage across the world. .. I'm also curious given the data and power usage, if AI assisted heatmap is actually more accurate than one developed by downloading a single dataset of high resolution satellite imagery at night, performing algorithmic analysis to draw heatmap based on light output or !maybe even simple image processing downsampling the image and shifting white-blue to red?
marklit•4d ago
70% of daytime RGB sat imagery is covered by clouds. I'm not sure how easy it would be to spot if clouds were covering a city's lights at night.
I've only seen Maxar publish one night time image and that was of Dubai. I suspect smaller buildings in not so well lit areas could end up getting missed out.
SAR imagery would work well for seeing at night and through clouds but I'm not sure what the state of AI building footprint detection is with SAR atm.
chasing0entropy•4d ago
Fascinating. So no such satellite data exists. Thanks for the insight, makes the linked write up much more satisfying.
Qem•4h ago
> The United Nations (UN) believes there are 4B buildings on Earth. This week, a dataset called "GlobalBuildingAtlas" (GBA) was published by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) that attempts to estimate this number at being closer to 2.75B.
If we painted the roofs on all of them white, by how much would the temperature of the planet drop?
jl6•16m ago
Probably not as much as if we “painted” them black with solar panels and used the resulting electricity to displace fossil fuel burning.
chasing0entropy•4d ago
But on a serious note this is an interesting project highlighting the sheer volume of power usage across the world. .. I'm also curious given the data and power usage, if AI assisted heatmap is actually more accurate than one developed by downloading a single dataset of high resolution satellite imagery at night, performing algorithmic analysis to draw heatmap based on light output or !maybe even simple image processing downsampling the image and shifting white-blue to red?
marklit•4d ago
I've only seen Maxar publish one night time image and that was of Dubai. I suspect smaller buildings in not so well lit areas could end up getting missed out.
SAR imagery would work well for seeing at night and through clouds but I'm not sure what the state of AI building footprint detection is with SAR atm.
chasing0entropy•4d ago