While so-called'deep learning' methods, that is machine learning techniques that use layered, artificial neural networks, to perform learning of unstructured data, has gained great popularity in research in the last few years, its integration within GIS is not always easy without specialist knowledge. New tools, however, are being and have been developed that potentially will allow a wider field of researchers to better take advantage of machine learning and deep learning specifically. So far, two clear leaders have emerged. ArcGIS has spent significantly in recent years to develop better tools for deep learning. They have used a variety of platforms that have been developed for imagery analysis, such as Keras and Tensorflow which are popular deep learning platforms, and have integrated them with ArcGIS Pro tools, such as ArcGIS Image Server.

While so-called'deep learning' methods, that is machine learning techniques that use layered, artificial neural networks, to perform learning of unstructured data, has gained great popularity in research in the last few years, its integration within GIS is not always easy without specialist knowledge. New tools, however, are being and have been developed that potentially will allow a wider field of researchers to better take advantage of machine learning and deep learning specifically. So far, two clear leaders have emerged. ArcGIS has spent significantly in recent years to develop better tools for deep learning. They have used a variety of platforms that have been developed for imagery analysis, such as Keras and Tensorflow which are popular deep learning platforms, and have integrated them with ArcGIS Pro tools, such as ArcGIS Image Server.

Yahoo! Inc., is getting into the artificial intelligence (AI) game with the release of new internally-built software under an open-source license. Called CaffeOnSpark, the software is able to perform'deep learning' on the vast ocean of data kept in Yahoo's Hadoop file system. Now, the company has made it available on GitHub for everyone to use. Deep learning is a machine learning method that's particularly useful in helping computers come to sort through and recognize user-generated data, and one of its most exciting use cases is where images are concerned. As such, Yahoo built CaffeOnSpark to help identify the billions of images posted onto its Flickr photo sharing website.