Pre-print indicates potential earlier start to COVID-19 in China
10 June 2020
"Satellite imagery in its ever-increasing accuracy and reach provides total visibility, a God-like uberveillance view of the world and all that resides within. We are entering an age where surveillance from space, our skies, buildings and vehicles, and even on-person body worn cameras or smartphones proliferate the gathering and recording and sharing of imagery (and corresponding digital information). At the same rate with the improvement in these capture technologies (i.e. image sensors) and an even greater number of commercial satellites being launched into space we have the ever improving capabilities to detect patterns of behaviour linked to locational activities. There are real social implications to the availability of this data, the ability to automatically use image and video analytics tools to infer what might be happening in a given situational context. Our once powerful military technologies, now in the hands of governments and commercial suppliers, can reveal a great deal about our every day practices. We might not be living the desert scene out of Patriot Games just yet, but we are not that far off.
Structured and unstructured data in all its forms, are made the richer for an overlay that explicitly reveals patterns of behaviour among the populace. We should caution however, that because we might be able to infer particular scenarios from visual raster images, it is still speculative inference unless it is determined to have the corresponding identity and conditional information for evaluative purposes. Location data no matter how convincing is also subject to misinformation, misrepresentation and information manipulation, just like statistics. But together with secondary sources of evidence, the case for a particular line of argumentation can become convincing. What we need to think about deeply here is space governance. Who has the right? Who has the technology up there in space to do things like determine an early onset of COVID-19? Who has the know-how? Were the images used publicly available? What are the processes and procedures by which researchers or non-allied states can raise the alarm bells? Will this data be admissible in an international court? And so much more."
Satellite tech has changed since the 1990s. Just like other sectors it has commercialized and new entrants with the know-how are now rushing to make a great deal of money. It means that we have more satellites than ever in space, and it may well get crowded. There is a lack of regulation governing the space industry as well. Companies are capitalizing on this. In Australia, we now have an amendment to the Space Activities Act.
Satellites used to be large (size of a car); then they became the size of a dishwasher, and today they can be the size of a shoe box or as some companies have demonstrated even smaller. CubeSats are small, block-shaped satellites that weigh about 1.3 kg. We now have small satellite launch vehicles that can get satellites to space at a fraction of the cost, potentially with a market size of thousands of CubeSats in space with a 10 centimetre width. The cost of launching your own CubeSat and getting it orbiting the Earth, might well cost you about 200,000 Australian dollars.
Example Australian companies that have this capability include Myriota and Gilmour Space Technologies. Myriota for example, rode with Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2018.
Instead of launching separate smaller satellites, it makes sense for some suppliers to offer “satellites-as-a-service”. They have the power and can dominate the space by choosing how to utilize their GPS capability.
We also have device level units called Internet of Things devices that have GPS sensors on board that can fix to satellites giving us continuous readings if we want them to when there is direct line of sight to satellites. Ground stations are used to communicate with the CubeSats which are used by devices. Players in the market always want to know who and what is up there.
So we are seeing technological advances in the size and cost of launching satellites into space, in image sensor capabilities, in how the data is stored and accessed on the cloud or on the Internet or via device level details, in network communications and processing speeds. It means we have more data available to us than ever.
In the mid 1990s when I was working for a telecommunications vendor, we used to purchase image raster and vector data to help with our network designs and capacity and services planning. SPOT Marconi was a major player and would sell their “tiles” at prohibitive costs. The granularity for its time was incredible, but now you can literally keep zooming in to someone’s hills hoist umbrella! The speed of capture and dissemination is mind-blowing.
We also have desktop computers and laptops that are more powerful and can easily open images, create databases with vector maps, and begin to pinpoint geolocated datasets to individual households on cadaster blocks. >> GPS does not work indoors.
The ability to integrate a variety of sources of information, like identity data, location data, condition data, customer data, citizen data, surveillance camera feeds, still shots, social media data is becoming increasingly possible. We are limited only by the number of CPUs and GPUs in a given system, the speed of a network connecting us to the Cloud, and the storage size available to us. The types of spatial queries we conduct, may take a few minutes to run versus a few days, it just depends on what is trying to be achieved.
Is the integrity of the data trusted? Individual data sets are taken at different times; we call this the vintage of the data. Time and date stamps are fairly accurate, but when it comes to location data that can be a complex problem, depending on the source of the location information used to generate the longitude and latitude of a dwelling for instance. It gets trickier when we are talking about moving objects.
Have the approaches been validated? Validation is the action of proving the accuracy of something. It’s really hard to validate multiple sources of data overlaid on the same GIS. Each dataset was gathered for a different reason, usually by a different supplier, created at different times. It is not as simple as just bringing all the data together at different layers and saying “aha- see, there it is”. Certainly, the visualization of data is powerful, but validation happens at multiple levels. We can create scenarios to ‘prove’ anything in fact, but raster images, just like photos can be misleading. This has been studied before by international relations scholars. A flag purportedly at half mast, may also have been rising when the photo was taken. Peoples demonstrating willingness to do something in a photo, may have guns to their heads just out of picture. In the same way, geographic information systems are not simply ‘objective’ data. Data is laden with values. Data is controlled by someone, a company, or a nation state. We have to look deeper before rushing to conclusions. It matters that these processes are not automated because then they are just like the signature drone strikes that kill people who are gathered outdoors, because they suspect they are terrorists plotting to cause harm, when in fact they are village elders gathered to discuss the needs of their communities. It’s really important we think about the human in the loop, yes, even with the creation of these kinds of rich sources of evidence. In the case of COVID-19, it is important that we ask the right questions of authorities, that there is mediation, that we do this with care, that we ask, what happened, help us to understand more.
Data is not human, although we are trying to make it “alive” in many instances. I held a workshop about this in 2019 “data alive”. Mostly we spoke about the pitfalls.
We have entered a very complex period where “who owns information” is now more difficult to answer than ever before. We could argue it is the companies and government agencies that have the capability to launch the satellites that gather the data. But that is not in fact true. Who owns space and who governs space is another issue.
As we all begin to learn about the complexities, these answers fall short. We also need to think about the deep value chains forming between defence and industry… call this the military-industrial complex. Deals are being done, the ‘proof via GIS’ is heavily political, and soon the average consumer for a hefty fee may well be asking general questions like: “can you track my daughter’s car visually for a week”, or “I think my wife is cheating on me can you make sure you take some images at x resolution for the weekends in the month of June! We already have companies offering “ground level” ANPR (Automated Number Plate Recognition) views of number plates on a busy highway for a fee, this is just the next stage.
Will our privacy and health be compromised? Yes! But this is just the beginning of this wave of change. Our FitBits and other GPS-based watch devices and wearables are already talking to satellites; the question will be how this data will be used. Companies are already investing in application development to look at location behavior as it is linked to mental health concerns, for example, where to next is limited to someone’s imagination alone.
Source: Katina Michael, June 10, 2020, “Pre-print indicates potential earlier start to COVID-19 in China”, SCIMEX, https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-pre-print-indicates-potential-earlier-start-to-covid-19-in-china
References: It has been reported overnight that COVID-19 may have been circulating in China as early as August 2019 based on satellite data of hospital carparks in Wuhan and internet search terms related to COVID-19 symptoms. The pre-print is accessible here: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42669767/Satellite_Images_Baidu_COVID19_manuscript_DASH.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Coronavirus may have spread through China earlier than we think (Nine News)
Satellite images expose China’s virus lie (news.com.au)
China, scientists dismiss Harvard study suggesting COVID-19 was spreading in Wuhan in August (SBS)
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