A weakly supervised approach for estimating spatial density functions from high-resolution satellite imagery

Nathan Jacobs, Adam Kraft, Muhammad Usman Rafique, Ranti Dev Sharma

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

We propose a neural network component, the regional aggregation layer, that makes it possible to train a pixel-level density estimator using only coarse-grained density aggregates, which reflect the number of objects in an image region. Our approach is simple to use and does not require domain-specific assumptions about the nature of the density function. We evaluate our approach on several synthetic datasets. In addition, we use this approach to learn to estimate high-resolution population and housing density from satellite imagery. In all cases, we find that our approach results in better density estimates than a commonly used baseline. We also show how our housing density estimator can be used to classify buildings as residential or non-residential.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2018
EditorsLi Xiong, Roberto Tamassia, Kashani Farnoush Banaei, Ralf Hartmut Guting, Erik Hoel
Pages33-42
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450358897
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 6 2018
Event26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2018 - Seattle, United States
Duration: Nov 6 2018Nov 9 2018

Publication series

NameGIS: Proceedings of the ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems

Conference

Conference26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period11/6/1811/9/18

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.

Funding

FundersFunder number
National Science Foundation (NSF)1553116

    Keywords

    • Dasymetric mapping
    • Population density
    • Remote sensing

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Earth-Surface Processes
    • Computer Science Applications
    • Modeling and Simulation
    • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
    • Information Systems

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