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Facebook Disaster Maps - Using Data to Help Communities Recover and Rebuild

newsroom.fb.com - By Molly Jackman - June 7, 2017

Today, we are introducing disaster maps that use aggregated, de-identified Facebook data to help organizations address the critical gap in information they often face when responding to natural disasters. Many of these organizations worked with us to identify what data would be most helpful and how it could be put to action in the moments following a disaster.

This initiative is the product of close work with UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the World Food Programme, and other organizations. 

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Surveillance for good? Facebook tracks disaster victims

CLICK HERE - Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook

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UN Images: 18,000 Destroyed Structures in South Sudan Region

abcnews.go.com - by JUSTIN LYNCH, ASSOCIATED PRESS - April 7, 2017

United Nations satellite images obtained by The Associated Press show at least 18,000 structures have been destroyed in the Yei area of South Sudan. It is one of the most significant caches of evidence of widespread destruction in the country's civil war.

The Yei region has become an epicenter of fighting between government and rebels after a peace deal collapsed in July. The U.N. has highlighted the area for its risk of genocide, and an AP reporter late last year during a visit to Yei saw charred bodies with their arms bound . . .

 . . . "Where are the people? That means that 18,000 families are dead or are displaced," Ateny said.

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Arctic Heating Up at Twice as Fast as Rest of Globe

           

Arctic Sea Ice Disappearing

CLICK HERE - NOAA - Arctic Report Card: Update for 2016

cnn.com - by Mayra Cuevas and Max Blau - December 14, 2016

The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world -- triggering a "massive decline in sea ice and snow," according to a new federal report.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its 11th annual Arctic Report Card, which compiles data from 61 scientists in 11 countries.

"Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year," Jeremy Mathis, director of NOAA's Arctic Research Program, said in a statement.

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CLICK HERE - NASA - Scientific Visualization Studio - Weekly Animation of Arctic Sea Ice Age with Graph of Ice Age By Area: 1984 - 2016

CLICK HERE - VIDEO - NASA - Older Arctic Sea Ice Disappearing

 

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Google Unveils Neural Network with “Superhuman” Ability to Determine the Location of Almost Any Image

           

Guessing the location of a randomly chosen Street View image is hard, even for well-traveled humans. But Google’s latest artificial-intelligence machine manages it with relative ease.

CLICK HERE - PlaNet - Photo Geolocation with Convolutional Neural Networks

CLICK HERE - GeoGuessr

technologyreview.com - by Emerging Technology from the arXiv - February 24, 2016

Here’s a tricky task. Pick a photograph from the Web at random. Now try to work out where it was taken using only the image itself. . . .

. . . Tobias Weyand, a computer vision specialist at Google, and a couple of pals . . . have trained a deep-learning machine to work out the location of almost any photo using only the pixels it contains.

Their new machine significantly outperforms humans and can even use a clever trick to determine the location of indoor images and pictures of specific things such as pets, food, and so on that have no location cues.

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NASA Finds New Way to Track Ocean Currents from Space

NASA's GRACE satellites (artist's concept) measured Atlantic Ocean bottom pressure as an indicator of deep ocean current speed. In 2009, this pattern of above-average (blue) and below-average (red) seafloor pressure revealed a temporary slowing of the deep currents. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image: NASA's GRACE satellites (artist's concept) measured Atlantic Ocean bottom pressure as an indicator of deep ocean current speed. In 2009, this pattern of above-average (blue) and below-average (red) seafloor pressure revealed a temporary slowing of the deep currents. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

jpl.nasa.gov - November 2nd, 2015

A team of NASA and university scientists has developed a new way to use satellite measurements to track changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which are a driving force in global climate. The finding opens a path to better monitoring and understanding of how ocean circulation is changing and what the changes may mean for future climate.

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Satellites Expose Just How Bad Indonesia’s Fires Are

An image taken by German satellite TET-1, superimposed over one taken by NASA's MODIS, show just how many fires in Indonesia there were on September 24, 2015. DLR

Image: An image taken by German satellite TET-1, superimposed over one taken by NASA's MODIS, show just how many fires in Indonesia there were on September 24, 2015. DLR   

wired.com - November 9th, 2015 - Chelsea Leu

Indonesia has been aflame for a couple months now. That happens every fall—the country’s fire season is severe—but this time around, things are the worst they’ve been in almost two decades. This year’s crazy-strong El Niño has desiccated the region’s peat beds, while palm oil plantations exacerbate the problem by cutting down trees and draining the normally soggy land.

All that dry stuff adds up to create a big, flaming environmental catastrophe.

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Humanitarian UAV (“Drone”) Experts Meet at MIT

submitted by Andrew Schroeder

         

directrelief.org - by Andrew Schroeder - October 14, 2015

Early Fall mornings in Cambridge, MA have the feeling practically of American myth. The sun rises over the mist that hangs like a blanket on the Charles River, lighting the water with a pale glow that filters through multi-colored leaves and glints off the steel and glass fronts of the buildings which line the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I’m hurrying down Massachusetts Ave towards Technology Square, wind in my face and coffee in hand, to arrive for the start of the second annual Humanitarian UAV (drone) Experts Meeting happening at MIT Lincoln Labs’ Beaver Works. The meeting is hosted by UAViators (Humanitarian UAV Network), a brainchild of my friend and colleague Patrick Meier.

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UNHCR - Syria Regional Refugee Response - Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal

                                (CLICK ON THE MAP IMAGE BELOW - GO TO THE INTERACTIVE MAP)

          

UNHCR - Syria Regional Refugee Response - Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

UNHCR - Stories from Syrian Refugees - Discovering the human faces of a tragedy
http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/syria.php

 

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Humanity from Space

pbs.org - July 21, 2015

From the global perspective of space, this 2-hour special reveals the breathtaking extent of our influence, revealing how we’ve transformed our planet and produced an interconnected world of extraordinary complexity.

A journey through 12,000 years, Humanity from Space shows how seemingly small flashes of innovation have changed the course of civilization; innovations that touch all of us today in ways unimaginable to our ancestors. And we’ll gaze into the future at the new challenges we’ll face in order to survive as our global population soars because of our success.

CLICK HERE - PBS - Humanity from Space

CLICK HERE - YouTube - Humanity from Space

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