Researchers on WeBank’s AI Moonshot Team have taken a deep learning system developed to detect solar panel installations from satellite imagery and repurposed it to track China’s economic recovery from the novel coronavirus outbreak. This, as far as the researchers know, is the first time big data and AI have been used to measure the impact of the new coronavirus on China, Haishan Wu, vice general manager of WeBank’s AI department, told IEEE Spectrum. WeBank is a private Chinese online banking company founded by Tencent. The team used its neural network to analyze visible, near-infrared, and short-wave infrared images from various satellites, including the infrared bands from the Sentinel-2 satellite. This allowed the system to look for hot spots indicative of actual steel manufacturing inside a plant.  In the early days of the outbreak, this analysis showed that steel manufacturing had dropped to a low of 29 percent of capacity. But Continue reading Satellites and AI Monitor Chinese Economy’s Reaction to Coronavirus→