Things you spot on satellite maps...

Today I randomly had the thought to follow up on a project I'd contributed some work to a few years back. They're looking for people to pick out brick kilns in satellite images as a way of mapping out potential slavery:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ezzjcw/rights-lab-slavery-from-space/about/research

Seems there have been no updates for a few years but you can still classify images, so I got to doing a few because it's kind of like Where's Waldo except Waldo might be a center of human rights violations. At one point I saw what looked like a brick kiln but it looked...weird. They're almost always a reddish light brown color, have a smokestack in the middle, usually a racetrack-like oval shape but occasionally circular or rectangular, generally very neatly laid out. This one was the usual color but was highly asymmetrical which was super weird. I wanted to get another perspective at what this thing was, so I punched the image coordinates into Google Maps. Then there was something even more unusual, Google Street View available.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/23%C2%B058'09.3%22N+90%C2%B003'31.5%22E/@23.9692513,90.056177,1015m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d23.9692464!4d90.0587519?entry=ttu

So I drop the little Street View guy right in front of "RBC" and I can confirm that it is a brick kiln along with another weird asymmetrical one that was in the classification image. And there are strong signs of people living in the factory grounds including a child in the yard for some reason. It's a pattern you'll see repeated at "MBC" to the west and another unlabelled one to the north. When I first saw the project I wondered how long it would take for the kilns to change their layout in response, it looks like the answer was 3-6 years. This place is a hotspot of these (there are tons more to the northeast along Kawalipara-Balia Rd, which also has Street View), and they all have these odd asymmetrical layouts.

Very interesting.  I got bored on my phone one night and started messing around in Google Earth.  Looked up some Star Wars film locations people had mentioned, then started looking up famous places like the pyramids in Egypt, Great Wall, etc.  Then old neighborhoods.  I should mess with that some more.

"Bored on Google Maps" is one of my favorite past times. 

Like... "I wonder if I can find Tyler Hoovie's farm..."  Five minutes later:

Yep.

+1 to "Bored on Google Maps"

i try to re-trace the different paths i used to bike when i was a kid, and look at all the different routes i took to go places when i was in high school.  inevitably i get to "WTF was i thinking?  i should have taken the Beltway."  before anyone protests, remember i'm talking about 40 years ago Beltway and associated traffic.

Bored Google Maps is great for a 10 minute break.  I enjoy finding museums and parks that have a lot of interior street views available, like all of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  The Lane Museum has a good walkthrough as well.

If you want to add another dimension to the game, pop up some historic aerials. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I wonder if spotting brick kilns and similar is one of those things AI's going to be good at. Filtering a bunch of info for a nuanced pattern and all.

Hrm. https://www.fastcompany.com/3068768/ever-want-image-search-for-google-earth-this-ai-driven-tool-does-that

This is great tech and a really good idea.  I spent 3 years of my 20's based out of Hong Kong doing factory audits for a very large garment manufaturer.  I was fortunate to travel all over ALL of South/Southeast Asia and South Africa, and have been to Saturia as a matter of fact.  The countries change, but labor exploitation is a very real and very serious issue with no solution due to government corruption and simple nonchalance.  I've seen so much, good and bad...  It brings me back. 

A lot of my rail photography I use Google Maps for. I follow the tracks using Google Maps to preselect locations where there are good grade crossings or I can easily hike back in or places where it parallels the road and I can park my car. Then I get there early, pre-drive the routes and determine which ones are better or worse in real life. 

are there any tricks to get better resolution Satellite photos , 

I would like one or 2 clicks better than what is now available , 

And to the OP , thats a great thing to do ,

I hope it gets results and some of those places are cleaned up and upgraded .

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Try bing maps and google earth as well. Not always the same as google maps, and sometimes the images on one are better. 

I can't do a screen grab so here are the coordinates.  My neighbor doesn't know what his pool looks like.

42°57'30"N 73°53'58"W

About twelve years ago I could GoogleMap my home and place of employment and see my Protege5 at both places. :0) Those photos have been replaced with new ones and one was now a empty lot.

GameboyRMH said:

Today I randomly had the thought to follow up on a project I'd contributed some work to a few years back. They're looking for people to pick out brick kilns in satellite images as a way of mapping out potential slavery:

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ezzjcw/rights-lab-slavery-from-space/about/research

Seems there have been no updates for a few years but you can still classify images, so I got to doing a few because it's kind of like Where's Waldo except Waldo might be a center of human rights violations. At one point I saw what looked like a brick kiln but it looked...weird. They're almost always a reddish light brown color, have a smokestack in the middle, usually a racetrack-like oval shape but occasionally circular or rectangular, generally very neatly laid out. This one was the usual color but was highly asymmetrical which was super weird. I wanted to get another perspective at what this thing was, so I punched the image coordinates into Google Maps. Then there was something even more unusual, Google Street View available.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/23%C2%B058'09.3%22N+90%C2%B003'31.5%22E/@23.9692513,90.056177,1015m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d23.9692464!4d90.0587519?entry=ttu

So I drop the little Street View guy right in front of "RBC" and I can confirm that it is a brick kiln along with another weird asymmetrical one that was in the classification image. And there are strong signs of people living in the factory grounds including a child in the yard for some reason. It's a pattern you'll see repeated at "MBC" to the west and another unlabelled one to the north. When I first saw the project I wondered how long it would take for the kilns to change their layout in response, it looks like the answer was 3-6 years. This place is a hotspot of these (there are tons more to the northeast along Kawalipara-Balia Rd, which also has Street View), and they all have these odd asymmetrical layouts.

When I lived in Madagascar I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at brick kilns and how to make them cleaner. That one looks to be a lesser developed factory, when they get bigger and use the full "raceway" layout with the central chimney they can essentially wrap the firing process around the center in stages. Combustion air gets pulled in on two sides, on one side it dries the unfired bricks, and on the other it cools the fired bricks and preheats the air before entering the firing zone. They've tried to clean them up a bit in India and China with induced draft fans, etc. but it's still a dirty process and very incomplete combustion. Lots of research papers online about the construction, firing process, and how to improve brick manufacturing in these types of countries, just not a lot of willpower to do it.

FWIW the Swiss govt's technical outreach groups developed a vertical shaft brick kiln arrangement that's way less polluting and permits brick manufacturing year round. Only been successfully implemented in a few places, namely South Africa. Lots of Youtube vids on them.

Regarding kids at the factory? They live there I'm sure. The parent work there, and the owners like having people living on site for security, etc. Very typical in places like this. Not uncommon to have a whole "village" on the outer walls of a factory in these types of places. 

MyMiatas said:

About twelve years ago I could GoogleMap my home and place of employment and see my Protege5 at both places. :0) Those photos have been replaced with new ones and one was now a empty lot.

Around 12 years ago, the R52 MINI convertible my ex- and I bought was in the driveway of my house and my ex's house, which was a strange coincidence as the car was rarely at my house. 

The current image of my house is pretty accurate and appears to have been taken during the past year or so while I was working in NH.  It also makes me wish there was some way to build a shop in my back yard without taking down most of the trees... since much of my back yard is hidden from above, including where I want to locate the shop. 

For a short time my job required some Google maps searching for things for our facilities geo location effort. Basically I was both locating our structures and showing my leadership that Google maps isn't perfect and getting the latt long off it doesn't always work. (Worst example is in Mississippi, take latt long off Google maps from center of our building and it gives numbers that put our building 33.7 miles away from actual location. )

So over hours I would find interesting little trails or what look like rallycross tracks near our facilities. 

Then crazy enough one photo had a grassy area with an actual rallycross going on! It was cool and funny to see.

My old house in VA still showed my cars in the driveway years after moving away. But only at a certain zoom. Zoom in or out one step and it was a more up to date image. 

Once found a yard with a bunch of cars that looked like stealth/gt3000s and found out it is a used parts shop near me that I could buy Evo parts from! As they were trying to add evo part sales to their building full of stealth parts. 

I found this years ago, i think it was off of Australia.

About 13 years ago, when my kids were in Cub Scouts, we spent a weekend at a Girl Scout camp (off-season). One of the fathers pulled up the Google Maps view of the building we were staying in, and called over a few of us.  That view, with no leaves on the trees, has been updated, but you should be able to fill in the obscured parts.

Google earth is a powerful tool. I use it every day at work (civil engineer). I could list the things I use it for, but we don't have all day. 
 

As someone else mentioned, the historic aerials site (historicaerials.com) is also awesome. 

One of my early Google maps adventures was finding nuclear test craters :D

Some counties have better photos on their GIS websites.

I found this house in the Green Bay area:

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

I would love to have you list some of the things you use Google Earth for ,  hopefully we can learn something :)

Thanks

In reply to RossD :

Just looked up that guys taxes on the brown county plat map. $126,367.18 per year...

Scotty Con Queso said:

Google earth is a powerful tool. I use it every day at work (civil engineer). I could list the things I use it for, but we don't have all day. 
 

As someone else mentioned, the historic aerials site (historicaerials.com) is also awesome. 

Thanks for that link!