Goal of the project
- To find target sites we need to exclude those that already have electricity. In addition, those close to the grid were given low priority as they are more likely to receive it directly in the future. The volume of available and free satellite data is incredible. There are night-time light images that clearly show towns that have light.
- But how do we validate that? Here we can leverage the magic of google maps. I find it awesome to be able to zoom in on a road in Pakistan to see whether it has streetlamps. Based on a selection of test towns it was possible to calibrate and validate the data from satellite images.
- For the electricity grid, you may think the government and electricity companies would know where their cables are. But they do not!
- Fortunately, we could leverage an existing model to identify electricity cables that used a combination of machine learning on satellite images and human checking.