Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34285205›Full record

ArticleNature communications2021

A generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery.

Esther Rolf, Jonathan Proctor, Tamma Carleton, Ian Bolliger, Vaishaal Shankar, Miyabi Ishihara, Benjamin Recht, Solomon Hsiang

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
22citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
0.4field-weighted citation impact, top 41% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 6 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
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  14. Augmenting the availability of historical GDP per capita estimates through machine learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
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  16. Cross-prediction-powered inference.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.

Esther Rolf *Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, UC Berkeley, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-5066-8656
Jonathan Proctor *Center for the Environment and Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-8053-8828
Tamma Carleton *Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-5518-0550
Ian Bolliger *Global Policy Laboratory, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-8055-297X
Vaishaal Shankar *Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, UC Berkeley, USA.
Miyabi IshiharaGlobal Policy Laboratory, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, USA.ORCID 0000-0003-0799-5090
Benjamin RechtElectrical Engineering & Computer Science Department, UC Berkeley, USA.
Solomon HsiangGlobal Policy Laboratory, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley, USA. shsiang@berkeley.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-2074-0829
University of California, Berkeley · USGlobal Policy Institute · USHarvard University · USNational Bureau of Economic Research · USRhodium Group (United States) · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Combining satellite imagery with machine learning (SIML) has the potential to address global challenges by remotely estimating socioeconomic and environmental conditions in data-poor regions, yet the resource requirements of SIML limit its accessibility and use. We show that a single encoding of satellite imagery can generalize across diverse prediction tasks (e.g., forest cover, house price, road length). Our method achieves accuracy competitive with deep neural networks at orders of magnitude lower computational cost, scales globally, delivers label super-resolution predictions, and facilitates characterizations of uncertainty. Since image encodings are shared across tasks, they can be centrally computed and distributed to unlimited researchers, who need only fit a linear regression to their own ground truth data in order to achieve state-of-the-art SIML performance.

Identifiers

PMID34285205
PMCPMC8292408
OpenAlexW3092690394

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.