India discovers its slums with drones and satellites

L & # 39; State of Odisha aims to give titles to 200,000 households in slums and those on the outskirts of cities at the end of the year.

Officials used drones to map settlements [19659003] "What can take us years to do, we've done in a few months." Vathanan, Commissioner of the State Housing Department, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation last week [19659003] The land records of the country date back to the epoch British colonial and most of the holdings are uncertain, resulting in frauds and lengthy disputes.

Officials in Mumbai, where about 60 percent of the population lives in informal settlements, also maps shanty towns with drones. The state of Maharashtra, where the city is located, launches a similar exercise for rural properties

In the city of Bengaluru, a seven-year study that has recently concluded satellite imagery and machine learning The study has identified about 2,000 informal settlements, compared with less than 600 in government documents

"Understanding human settlements patterns in urbanizing cities is important because of the stress on civic resources and public services, "said Nikhil Kaza. , Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina

"Geospatial badysis can help identify areas of stress, and allow civil authorities to focus their efforts in localized areas," said Kaza , who badyzed the Bengaluru data. 4] About one-third of the world's urban population lives in informal settlements, according to United Nations data

These settlements can account for 30-60% of urban housing, but they are generally underestimated, resulting in a lack of essential services that can exacerbate poverty.

The identification and monitoring of institutions with traditional approaches such as door-to-door surveys are expensive and time consuming. As technology becomes cheaper, officials in Nairobi, Mumbai instead use satellite images and drones