Mapping the world to help aid workers, with weakly, semi-supervised learning

When disaster or disease strikes, relief agencies respond more effectively when they have detailed mapping tools to know exactly where to deliver assistance. But extremely reliable and precise maps often are not available. So, our team, composed of artificial intelligence researchers and data scientists in Facebook's Boston office, used our computer vision expertise to create and share population density maps that are more accurate and higher resolution than any of their predecessors. Building on our previous publication of similar high-resolution population maps for 22 countries, we're now releasing new maps of the majority of the African continent, and the project will eventually map nearly the whole world's population. When it is completed, humanitarian agencies will be able to determine how populations are distributed even in remote areas, so that health care workers can better reach households and relief workers can better distribute aid.