Inequality may seem something that is all too evident, as run down streets and communities show visible signs of lacking due care and attention, But in many communities, poverty can lie out of plain sight. New research from Imperial College London suggests deep learning can be used to better detect social, economic, environmental, and health inequalities than existing methods. The researchers believe their system can help policymakers gain a greater understanding of the inequalities that exist within their city, and therefore have more informed policies for tackling them. What's more, the real-time nature of the metrics allows more effective interventions to be crafted. The team's deep learning-based system was trained on publicly available street view images from London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds combined with government statistics.