Apply Computer Vision and Machine Learning to Measure Human Perceived Street Environments
Our Company Big Data Analytics & Informatics
Novel Tech ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence
Expertise on cities Design & development
A-STRA.ai is a data and technology driven platform where decisions on urban development can be informed and made explicitly. We have provided strategic advisory services for governments in China, North America and Middle East. We understand the importance of right strategies to support the long-term economic, social and environmental development of cities. We leverage our skills in strategic consulting, big data, artiďŹ cial intelligence and machine learning to help our clients create urban strategies and transform them into actionable plans.
Our Service
Action
Better data supports better decision. We leverage our superior skills in big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and spatial analysis
Insights are actionable in economic, institutional and physical dimensions.
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Data
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Urban & Community Sustainability
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Economic Development & Impact
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Urban Policy
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Real Estate and Financial Feasibility
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Transportation
Insight We provide strategic insights to governments, companies
Our Team Our founding members got superior academic training from top universities including Harvard, MIT, Cornell, UCL as well as professional experience in consultancy, design and engineering industries including BCG, SASAKI, Senseable City Lab and Media Lab.
Co-founder
Xiaokai Huang
is a doctoral candidate in urban and real estate studies at Harvard University. He worked at Boston Consulting Group as a consultant. Before that, he worked as a project manager at a boutique consulting ďŹ rm, with a focus on the Chinese market. In this role, he collaborated with municipal governments and real estate developers in China for their development strategies. He also worked with the Development Research Centre of State Council, P.R.China. He began his career as an urban planner with Sasaki Associates in Boston.
Co-founder
Waishan Qiu
is a Ph.D. student in Regional Science at Cornell. He obtains master of city planning degree at MIT and is an experienced spatial data scientist and digital designer. He was a former researcher at the Media Lab, Senseable City.Lab, LCAU and Harvard Kennedy School working on various geospatial analysis and urban computing projects.
Team Member Spatial Analysis | Xiaojiang
Li
is a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Senseable City Lab, and is an expert in data-driven geospatial analysis. His work has been featured in popular media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Guardian and Forbes.
ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence | Bill
Cai
Obtains S.M. in Computational Engineering from MIT and specializes in deep learning and computer vision. As a data scientist in One Concern, he builds deep learning pipelines for city-wide analysis. He previously interned in Thumbtack and Arcstone.
Transportation | Jintai
Li
Jintai is a Ph.D. student in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Transportation at MIT. His current research works with Transit Lab and the Urban Mobility Lab focus on 1) demand prediction in response to the introduction of ride-hailing services provided by autonomous vehicles, and 2) user preference and segmentation.
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Project Portfolio
Ongoing corporations
Partners
For a livable, sustainable, and competitive city The purpose of the project is to identify factors in the built environment with positive or adverse effects to stress levels in humans. Of special interest are factors like building configurations, e.g. clusters of skyscrapers, traffic flows, materials, vegetation, humidity, temperature etc.
Ongoing corporations Research Framework and Expected Outcome
Living in urban dwellings
Factors in the built environment building configurations, e.g. clusters of skyscrapers, traffic flows, materials, vegetation, humidity, temperature etc.
Correlation
Pollutions in terms of air, noise, and light
Serious stress-related diseases
Depressions, diabetes II, autistic disorders from exposure in children’s early years For older people Cardio-, cancers, and respiratory diseases
Outcomes A set of fact-based design codes
Pudong Project Highlights
Segment more than 100,000 street view images (SVI) from Baidu API
Apply 10 machine learning and 2 computer vision algorithms in the study
Run across 6 leading innovation cities in the globe
We propose 3 key actionable urban development metrics
0 | Overall Framework
1 | the development of the Street Space Assessment System 6 dimensional scores and 35 features segmented from Street View Image Evaluation System Establishment
1 Safety Score Algorithm + 4 dimensions
Evaluation Indicators Selection
2 | Database Build-up with 100K+ Street View Images across Pudong District 100K+ Street View Images Machine Learning
Experts Evaluation Street Score Prediction Feature Segmentation
Computer Vision
3 | Sampling for Training Models
3.1 Randomly sample 5000 images across Shanghai region as the training data
3.2 Download street view images with consistent angles and requirements Point of view is located in the middle of the road and parrelled to the road direction, control by a list of variables including [‘fov’,’pitch’,’heading’]
Sample code for Baidu Street View Image API: http://api.map.baidu.com/panorama/v2?ak=pYm2gy8gN6ODmgOelTS2BrwdpIM3GGr D&width=600&height=300&location=121.501361,31.287838&fov=150&pitch=0&headi ng=300 Sample code for Google Street View Image API is also similar
Training Model Highlights
1000
6
35
sample images across Shanghai as the training Data
aspects of human perceptions about street environments
street level features segmented from street view image
4 | Training Data Through Public Participation Visitors can directly click on the photo they prefer. To acquire training data of people’s preferences on street view images, we developed an online questionnaire platform on which the visitors can select the images they directly. These preferences are then translated to scores with Microsoft TrueSkill Algorithm.
A screenshot of our web page interface
1. Select the type of space this image represents: () Urban () Outskirt () Waterfront () Village () Industry park
Click on the image to visit the site 2. Click on the image which you think has better feeling of enclosure
5 | Sample Evaluation (Training Data Summary) Q1. Imageability
Q2. Enclosure
Q3. Human Scale
Urban
High
High
Waterfront
Low
Low
Q4. Complexity
Q5. Total Score
Outskirt
High
High
Rural
Low
Low
Industrial Park
6 | Model Training Step 1 Computer Vision: Semantic Segmentation (PSPNET)
6 | Model Training Step 1 Computer Vision: Instance Segmentation (MASK RCNN)
6 | Model Training Step 2 Machine Learning with ClassiďŹ cation and Regression Algorithms
Linear kernel SVM
Support Vector Machine
Predict Labels
Polynomial kernel SVM RBF kernel SVM Dual SVM
Urban/rural/outskirt/... Number of neighborhoods
Machine Learning
K-nearest neighbors
Classification
Predict Scores
Predict scores for unseen street view images based on the training data Regression
Euclidean/Manha ttan distance Weighted distance
Overall Score Decision Tree Regression Enclosure Score Linear Regression Human Scale Score Richness Score
Multivariable Regression
Polynomial Regression
Best Fit Model Base on RMSE and R square
6 | Model Training Results
6 | Result Geospatial Visualization
by features: pedestrian count
by features: green view index
by features: sky ratio
6 | Result Geospatial Visualization
6 | Result Geospatial Visualization Dimension Correlation Analysis
Robust Check with External Data (overlay Q4. Complexity map with Dazhongdianping app data)
7 | Global City Benchmark Overall Score Evaluation across 5 other Global Innovative Cities with Shanghai
Kendall Square Cambridge, USA
Knowledge Quarter, London,UK
Wall Street, Manhattan, USA
Downtown, San Francisco, USA
South Lake Union, Seattle, USA
Zhangjiang Park Shanghai, China
7 | Global City Benchmark Overall Score Evaluation across 5 other Global Innovative Cities
街道质量得分的核密度曲 线 | Kernel Density Estimation Shanghai
San Francisco
街道质量评价地图 | Street Overall Score Mapping
London
Seattle
Cambridge
Manhattan
7 | Global City Benchmark Street Assessment Results of the 6 global cities based on Street View Image Segmentation and Machine Learning
Kernel Density Estimation (KDE)
Kernel Density Estimation (KDE)
Q3.Human Scale Score
Q5.Overall Score Kernel Density Estimation (KDE)
(1 is urban and 2 is rural)
Q4.Diversity Score
Q2.Enclosure Score
Kernel Density Estimation (KDE)
Q1. Average score of the IdentiďŹ cation for Urban/ Rural cityscapes
7 | Global City Scores Breakdowns Look at the score breakdowns in the 5 dimensions of perceptions of “enclosure, humanity, diversity, safety and overall scores�, Shanghai receives the lowest scores in all, and particularly in Enclosure and Diversity breakdowns as the gaps between Shanghai and other cities in terms of these 2 dimensions are the greatest.
7 | Global City Street Features Breakdowns Look at the feature breakdowns in the more than 20 street features ranging from road, building, sky, tree to sidewalks, Shanghai receives the relatively bad performance in sky ratio,building ratio, road ratio, street walls, fences. Those features particularly aect Enclosure and Diversity perceptions. Surprisingly, the greenery or tree canopy ratio in Shanghai is very high.
7 | Global City Street Features Breakdowns Look at the feature breakdowns in the more than 20 street features ranging from road, building, sky, tree to sidewalks, Shanghai receives the relatively bad performance in sky ratio,building ratio, road ratio, street walls, fences. Those features particularly aect Enclosure and Diversity perceptions. Surprisingly, the greenery or tree canopy ratio in Shanghai is very high.
7 | Global City Street Features Breakdowns Look at the feature breakdowns on Diversity score, we can see that Shanghai receive the worst Diversity Score as a result of high ratio of street walls and fences.
7 | Global City Street TraďŹƒc Breakdowns We can even get some glimpse at the traďŹƒc amount on the road from street view images.
7 | Global City Street Slow TraďŹƒc Breakdowns We can even get some glimpse at the slow traďŹƒc amount on the road from street view images.
7 | Global City Urban Form Comparison
7 | Global City Urban Form Metrics Comparison
7 | Global City Urban Development Metrics Comparison
7 | Global City Urban Development Metrics Comparison
7 | Global City Urban Amenities Comparison
Three Key Actionable Metrics
5-6 FAR
40-50
5-7
/sqkm
/1000 PPL
Block Density
Third Place Density
8| Implications for Zoning & Urban Design Guidelines Learn from the evaluation results, urban designers now are enabled with more human-centered and scalable approaches. The photo is a example: a student generated a urban renewal scheme in a design workshop based on our methods.
9 | Other Deliverables
Click on the image to visit the site
Unlocking NYC’s Potential
Equitable Development
Assets Investigation and Management
Zoning and Urban Planning Guidelines
Urban Environment Assessments
Equitable Development Online platform to collect and learn a diverse group of people’s collective insights and perceptions about street and public spaces
Assets Investigation and Management Learn to predict vacant houses and properties, predict property values, potential commercial activities
Zoning and Urban Planning Guidelines Provide more human-centered and evidence-based approaches to support planning and design decisions
Urban Environment Assessments Scalable and eďŹƒcient tool to evaluate the performance of built environment most related to public spaces (streets, parks, plazas)
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