Simply after dawn on Saturday, a satellite tv for pc set its long-range digital camera on town of Mandalay in Myanmar, not removed from the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Southeast Asian nation’s second-largest metropolis.
The mission was to seize pictures that, mixed with synthetic intelligence know-how, might assist reduction organizations shortly assess what number of buildings had collapsed or have been closely broken and the place helpers most wanted to go.
At first, the high-tech laptop imaginative and prescient strategy wasn’t working.
“The biggest challenge in this particular case was the clouds,” mentioned Microsoft’s chief knowledge scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres. “There’s no way to see through clouds with this technology.”
The clouds ultimately moved and it took a number of extra hours for one more satellite tv for pc from San Francisco-based Planet Labs to seize the aerial footage and ship them to Microsoft’s philanthropic AI for Good Lab. By then it was already about 11 p.m. Friday at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. A bunch of Microsoft employees was prepared and ready for the information.
The AI for Good lab has executed this type of AI-assisted harm evaluation earlier than, monitoring Libya’s catastrophic flooding in 2023 or this yr’s wildfires in Los Angeles. However somewhat than depend on an ordinary AI laptop imaginative and prescient mannequin that might run any visible knowledge, they needed to construct a custom-made model particular to Mandalay.
“The Earth is too different, the natural disasters are too different and the imagery we get from satellites is just too different to work in every situation,” Lavista Ferres mentioned. For example, he mentioned, whereas fires unfold in pretty predictable methods, “an earthquake touches the whole city” and it may be tougher to know within the rapid aftermath the place assist is required.
As soon as the AI evaluation was full, it confirmed 515 buildings in Mandalay with 80% to 100% harm and one other 1,524 with between 20% and 80% harm. That confirmed the widespread gravity of the catastrophe, however, simply as vital, it helps pinpoint particular areas of harm.
“This is critical information for teams on the ground,” Lavista Ferres mentioned.
Microsoft cautioned that it “should serve as a preliminary guide and will require on-the-ground verification for a complete understanding.” However within the meantime, the tech firm has shared the evaluation with assist teams such because the Purple Cross.
Planet Labs says its satellites — it has 15 of them orbiting the Earth — have now photographed roughly a dozen areas in Myanmar and Thailand since Friday’s quake.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
