industryterm:satellite photos

  • Burma: Satellite Images Show Urban Destruction
    450 Buildings Burned in Rohingya Neighborhoods

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/09/burma-satellite-images-show-urban-destruction

    https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/946w/public/multimedia_images_2017/201709asia_burma_maungdawtown_map.png?itok=S3PN_pya

    New satellite images show hundreds of buildings destroyed in primarily Rohingya Muslim urban areas in Burma’s Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said today. Satellite photos taken on September 2, 2017, show 450 buildings destroyed by fire in the town of Maungdaw, the administrative capital of Maungdaw township. Satellite-based heat sensing technology indicated active fires in this area on August 28.

    “The widespread destruction of urban areas in Maungdaw town suggests that Burmese security forces are not just attacking Rohingya Muslims in isolated villages,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Burmese government has an obligation to protect everyone in the country, but if safety cannot even be found in area capitals, then no place may be safe.”

  • Terrapattern
    http://www.terrapattern.com

    “similar-image search” for satellite photos. It’s an open-source tool for discovering “patterns of interest” in unlabeled satellite imagery—a prototype for exploring the unmapped, and the unmappable.

    (...) Terrapattern is ideal for discovering, locating and labeling typologies that aren’t customarily indicated on maps. These might include ephemeral or temporally-contingent features (such as vehicles or construction sites), or the sorts of banal infrastructure (like fracking wells or smokestacks) that only appear on specialist blueprints, if they appear at all.

    (...) the Terrapattern prototype is intended to demonstrate a workflow by which users—such as journalists, citizen scientists, humanitarian agencies, social justice activists, archaeologists, urban planners, and other researchers—can easily search for visually consistent “patterns of interest”. We are particularly keen to help people identify, characterize and track indicators which have not been detected or measured previously, and which have sociological, humanitarian, scientific, or cultural significance.

    http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/meet-terrapattern-google-earths-missing-search-engine

    #photographie #satellite #IA #neural_network #moteur_de_recherche #cartographie

  • Russian Meddling in Syria Drives Netanyahu to Moscow - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz - Amos Harel - Sep 21
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.676885

    Aside from reducing risk of unwanted clash between Israeli and Russian fighter jets, PM’s visit should be seen in a wider context of tensions between Moscow and Washington.

    The immediate reason for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow on Monday is increased Russian military involvement in Syria.

    On Sunday, the first satellite photos were released from the air base that Russia is building on the Alawite strip of coast in northern Syria near Latakia. Netanyahu, who in an unusual step is taking Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, with him and, at the last minute, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, will devote much of his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to preventing direct friction between Israel and Russia in the north.

    The aircraft photographed in northern Syria are Sukhoi 27s. Their main mission, according to experts on the Russian Air Force, is to ensure aerial superiority, not bombardment. That underscores the assessment that Russia has not sent its forces to the region just to fight Islamic State, which is what Russia stresses in justifying its new military deployment, but that Moscow wants to establish a more significant presence. Anti-aircraft batteries will apparently also be deployed to protect the base, as well as a small number of ground forces, tanks, APCs, and a special low-profile unit, in what is reminiscent of Russia’s conduct in the war in Ukraine.

    But beyond reducing the risk of an unwanted clash between Israeli and Russian fighter jets over Syria or Lebanon, it seems that the visit should be seen in a wider context of tensions between Moscow and Washington.

    And although Netanyahu only last week said “commentators” were wrong when they warned of a collapse of ties between Israel and the United States in light of the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu’s current visit to Moscow could be seen as an Israeli jab at Washington. The visit seems to reflect Netanyahu’s lack of faith in the ability or the intent of the United States to protect Israel’s security interests.

    The visit cannot be considered good news in Washington, which led a campaign of condemnation and sanctions against Moscow over its involvement in the war in Ukraine last summer. (Israel did not take a position on that conflict and was duly rewarded by Russia which issued a moderate response to Israel’s actions in the war on Gaza shortly thereafter.)

    The turning point in Russia’s policy in Syria can be traced to about a month ago. It’s interesting that it was a report from Israel — Yedioth Ahronoth’s report on the deployment of Russian fighter jets in northern Syria — that brought the issue to the attention of the world media. A few days later the American media began talking about it. It looks like Jerusalem is encouraging the publication of reports public of developments that would force the United States to intervene. But this time, Netanyahu is adding his high-profile visit to Russia.

    Security sources in Israel who are knowledgeable about preparations for the visit said that Israel wants to ensure that Russian planes will not restrict the Israel Air Force’s freedom of movement on the northern border and will not lead to accidents or aerial battles. To this end, there will be an attempt to set rules of caution and perhaps a coordination procedure. Israel will also tell Russia that it would only consider intervening in Syria if red lines are crossed — namely, terror against Israel from Syrian territory, or an attempt to move advanced weaponry from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    These two red lines are connected to Russia. Most of the advanced arms Syria is getting are Russian. And with regard to terror, Israel is concerned over the third member of the partnership keeping Assad’s regime alive — Iran. Last year there was a series of attacks in the enclave still held by Assad’s forces in the northern end of the Syrian border with Israel in the Golan Heights. It is reasonable to assume that Israel will ask for Russia’s help in reining in attacks led by Iran from the border in the Golan.

    Another question preoccupying Israel involves the fate of the hundreds of thousands of Druze in the Jabal al-Druze region near the border with Jordan. The Druze have in recent months been trying to distance themselves from Assad’s regime, threatened as they are from east and west by Sunni rebel forces.

    Israel has in the past asked the United States to help protect the Druze in light of concern by Druze in Israel and in the Golan Heights for their brethren in Syria. A similar request might be addressed to Putin.

    In an article this week in the magazine Foreign Affairs, the Israeli scholar Dr. Dima Adamsky describes Russia’s current policy in the region as a new and expanded version of Soviet intervention for Egypt during the War of Attrition, 45 years ago.

    Adamsky, of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, writes that the operation was considered a success because the contingent of forces and adviser it sent saved the Egyptian regime and deterred Israel. According to Adamsky, Russia’s new assertiveness in the Middle East serves its supreme goal: attaining regional status parallel to that of the United States, in addition to secondary goals such as creating a buffer zone against jihadists that could strike Russia from the south.

    Russia, Adamsky writes, sees the Arab Spring five years ago as the result of mistaken American Middle Eastern policy and the upheaval in the region almost directly hurt Russian interests when it led to the toppling of Gadhafi’s regime in Libya and endangered Assad’s regime.

    Russia is also working on improving ties with Sunni countries – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Russia played an important role in the agreement two years ago on the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria and to a certain extent also helped put together the Iranian nuclear agreement in Vienna.

    Russia hopes to parlay its renewed ties with Egypt and Syria into arms deals and economic contracts with countries in the region. In Moscow, Netanyahu and Eizenkot will be meeting a major player in the region, who long ago stopped making do with playing second fiddle to the United States.

  • Satellites capture Istanbul’s ‘gray’ transformation over past decade - GREEN

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/satellites-capture-istanbuls-gray-transformation-in-past-decade.a

    A comparison of 20 satellite photos hosted by Google Earth reveals how Istanbul has changed with more concrete and less green spaces in the past decade.

    As the ongoing construction boom continues with controversial development projects that have angered locals and environmentalists, Mutlu Kent, an urban blog, compiled the satellite photos of Istanbul to show the appearance of various sites today and 10 years ago.

    Yaşar Adnan Adanalı, a Turkish Ph. D candidate at Berlin Technical University’s International Urban Institute, said in his blog post on Oct. 29 that “all empty spaces in Istanbul are now being filled” by this transformation.

    #turquie #istanbul #cartographie #images_satellite

  • NATO’s Russian troop build-up satellite images ‘show 2013 drills’
    http://rt.com/news/nato-satellite-images-drills-712

    NATO satellite photos show Russian military buildup near Ukraine
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/10/us-ukraine-crisis-nato-photos-idUSBREA391DA20140410

    An official in the Russian military general staff said the NATO satellite photographs were taken in August 2013, state-run news agency RIA reported.

    “These photographs that were distributed by NATO depict units of Russian forces of the Southern Military District which conducted various exercises last summer, some of them near the border with Ukraine,” RIA quoted what it said was a high-level official in the Russian general staff as saying.

    A NATO official responded that the images were from March and April this year and each image showed the date it was taken.

  • The Big Atlas of LA Pools
    http://benedikt-gross.de/log/2013/06/the-big-atlas-of-la-pools

    The “Big Atlas of LA Pools” is about the process of mapping and map-making in the contemporary age of #big_data, #open_data, #crowdsourcing, and citizen science.

    Mappers spot all the pools in L.A. Basin
    http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-swimming-pools-20131202-dto,0,198951.htmlstory

    The two men started by sending two sets of satellite photos from the federal National Agriculture Imagery Program — one a true color composite, the other a false-color version to make the pools easier to spot — to a crowd-sourcing service in India. They paid workers $300 to draw the outline of every pool shown in the pictures onto a computer program.

    They then spent an additional $350 to have the initial count double-checked by Amazon Mechanical Turk, another crowdsourcing service. Workers there inspected images of each swimming pool’s location to confirm it was a body of water and not, say, a house with a blue roof.

    The duo used eight publicly available databases, including latimes.com’s Mapping L.A., for the project. Other data sets used included the county’s parcel boundaries service, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s crime database, the assessor’s data set and a database that contained those donating money during the Proposition 8 campaign on gay marriage and the Megan’s Law list of registered child molesters.

    [...] Lee agrees: “The feeling that this is occurring with armies of people and computers doing the exact same exploration at a higher scale is frightening.”

    #surveillance #satellites #données #piscines