Afbeelding
Last year, a new edition of our Trend Report appeared with a contribution from our program manager Jasper Heslinga and colleagues from our partner ETFI on the use of satellite images to understand the tourism and leisure sector.
Why satellite images?
Satellite images are already available, but applications to the tourism and leisure sector are still limited. This article explores the possibilities and impossibilities for the tourism and leisure sector and what the research-technical and methodological challenges are in using open source satellite data to determine crowding. The article provides an overview of the potential use of satellite imagery to understand tourism and leisure by looking at whether vehicles can be counted automatically.
What has been discovered?
The research has yielded a suitable model that is trained to detect vehicles. However, disturbances such as dark asphalt, shade or trees cause automatic counts on vehicles to contain inconsistencies. Training the system with images that contain these characteristics may also lead to objects that are disturbed being included and therefore more accurate automatic counts arise.
Continue to experiment
This experiment was part of our Data & Development Lab in which we collaborate with NBTC and CBS. The delivered model could also work on other datasets, for example the occupation of marinas or waterways. For example, DataFryslân has started to automatically detect boats in Friesland. A recommendation is to further develop the technique, to explore how the technique can be scaled up for other regions and to deepen the scope of possible applications.
