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Between 2020 and 2050, Africa\u2019s population is expected to double<\/a>, adding 950 million more people to its urban areas alone. However, according to 2018 figures, a scarcity of affordable housing in many African cities has forced over half of the city dwellers in Sub-Saharan Africa to live in informal settlements. And in rural areas, many also occupy makeshift structures due to widespread poverty. <\/p>\n These shelters have remained largely undetectable using traditional monitoring tools. Machine learning, computer vision and remote sensing have come some way in recognizing buildings and roads, but when it comes to denser neighborhoods, it becomes much harder to distinguish small and makeshift buildings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why is this an issue? Because when preparing a humanitarian response, forecasting transportation needs, or planning basic services, being able to accurately map the built environment – which allows us to ascertain population density – is absolutely key.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s Open Buildings<\/a>\u00a0is a new open access dataset containing the locations and geometry of buildings across most of Africa. From Lagos\u2019 Makoko settlement to Dadaab\u2019s refugee camps, millions of previously invisible buildings have popped up in our dataset. This improved building data helps refine the understanding of where people and communities live, providing actionable information for state and non-state actors looking to provide services from sanitation<\/a> to education and vaccination.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nEnter Google\u2019s Open Buildings<\/h3>\n
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