This incredible map has one very important purpose

This new map of the world is very enlightening to scientists, in that it helps them see what areas of the world are hardest hit by poverty -- and that could be key in helping us eliminate poverty worldwide. This data is helping authorities track crop conditions, deforestation and, now, where poverty can be found across the globe where data collection by governments isn't very good. This data is potentially invaluable to humanitarian organizations and policymakers, and a team of researchers from Stanford University believes that they have created a deep-learning algorithm that can spot signs of poverty just based on the satellite images alone. It can check the conditions of roads, for example, to see how good the infrastructure in a particular area. "We have a limited number of surveys conducted in scattered villages across the African continent, but otherwise we have very little local-level information on poverty," study coauthor Marshall Burke, an assistant professor of Earth system science at Stanford and a fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, said in a statement.