Regarding the discussion of ger/yurt districts in cities, it's also important not to underestimate the cultural significance of the nomadic lifestyle and yurt culture.
Changing climate (desertification) and economic conditions have meant that a lot of people have given up their nomadic lifestyle and moved to cities or their outskirts (mostly Ulaanbaatar). They often are reluctant to do so, it's a big step, and they often hope it is a temporary one.
They set up their yurts not only because of housing shortages, but many are also hesitant to move into apartments or other permanent structures as it's seen as the last step in giving up this nomadic lifestyle. Often they are setting up their yurts next to permanent structures, either because they are living in the 'yard' of relatives or to expand their residences and stay connected to their culture.
You can see examples of this in the first images.
orbital-decay · 22m ago
I've traveled across Mongolia on a motorcycle many years ago, and one thing I never expected is how absolutely everyone living in a permanent house also has a yurt in their backyard, regardless of how good the house is. This made no sense to me as an outsider (like, do you really need a second house?) so I asked a local about this, and was given a funny look. Yurts are just hardwired into the culture, it's a status symbol, it's where you invite a guest, it so many things at once.
qq66 · 2h ago
Agree - ger living is not necessarily a failure of public policy, it could just be a cultural decision. Even Genghis Khan lived in a ger. Of course, for some people, it's likely to be a matter of necessity, for others, a matter of choice, but it's not prima facie bad.
> When ineffective policy results in a large chunk of the populace generationally living in yurts on the outskirts of urban areas, it’s clear that there is failure.
That's not at all clear.
Cthulhu_ · 2h ago
It also sounds like they would already have one, and / or that it would be relatively easy to move if they want or need to. Don't they go back to their more rural homes for special events, for example?
bz_bz_bz · 7m ago
There are zero yurts in Mongolia using machine learning.
icameron · 2h ago
Intrigued by this. What was the rate of false positives? For example are there storage tanks, silos, above ground pools mistaken for yurts?
shpx · 2h ago
It seems like a waste that you didn't use the 89,259 yurts that are already outlined in OpenStreetMap as input, though you would've probably had issues aligning the outlines with google maps imagery
I'm also guessing your model doesn't handle yurts that are on the border of a tile.
Finally, that's a much smaller number than I expected for a country of 3 million.
biorach · 2h ago
> Finally, that's a much smaller number than I expected for a country of 3 million.
172.7k yurts. Assuming that these are family residences for the most part, if we take an average occupancy of 4 (which is probably too low - the fertility rate is still quite high there) gives ~691k people living in yurts - approximately 20% of the population of 3.5 million - sounds reasonable.
No comments yet
rsynnott · 2h ago
> Finally, that's a much smaller number than I expected for a country of 3 million.
172k of them? That still seems like quite a lot of yurts; certainly more yurts per capita than anyone else has.
shpx · 2h ago
Wikipedia says 30% of 3.5 million are "nomadic or semi-nomadic", which would be 6 people to a yurt. I couldn't figure out what percentage of the country was done, but if he did 270,559/37,258,617 zoom 17 tiles then there could be another 100k in the other 99% of the data.
Living away from other people and not next to anything in particular is what I associate with nomads, the heuristic of searching a radius around landmarks doesn't make sense to me. I scrolled around a random remote desert area in Mongolia on Google Maps and found a yurt every couple of minutes.
shiandow · 1h ago
I'm confused why you wouldnt just do some random sampling to get some statistical bounds. At least then you'll know if you are close.
tomtomistaken · 35m ago
Nice, thanks for sharing! What would be the best way (and data source) to observe the number of yurts over time?
amelius · 1h ago
They use a semi-commercial solution (free for educational use).
I'm curious what the topology/architecture of the DL model is like. And are there better ways to approach this problem?
proxysna · 2h ago
Nice write up, also great to see Docker Swarm being used.
MangoToupe · 2h ago
Nice! Now how will you validate the result?
pimlottc · 26m ago
Ideally you’d verify against an in-person count of yurts over some control area. Otherwise this is just based on an assumption of what yurts look like on satellite.
Changing climate (desertification) and economic conditions have meant that a lot of people have given up their nomadic lifestyle and moved to cities or their outskirts (mostly Ulaanbaatar). They often are reluctant to do so, it's a big step, and they often hope it is a temporary one.
They set up their yurts not only because of housing shortages, but many are also hesitant to move into apartments or other permanent structures as it's seen as the last step in giving up this nomadic lifestyle. Often they are setting up their yurts next to permanent structures, either because they are living in the 'yard' of relatives or to expand their residences and stay connected to their culture.
You can see examples of this in the first images.
> When ineffective policy results in a large chunk of the populace generationally living in yurts on the outskirts of urban areas, it’s clear that there is failure.
That's not at all clear.
https://taginfo.geofabrik.de/asia:mongolia/tags/building=ger
I'm also guessing your model doesn't handle yurts that are on the border of a tile.
Finally, that's a much smaller number than I expected for a country of 3 million.
172.7k yurts. Assuming that these are family residences for the most part, if we take an average occupancy of 4 (which is probably too low - the fertility rate is still quite high there) gives ~691k people living in yurts - approximately 20% of the population of 3.5 million - sounds reasonable.
No comments yet
172k of them? That still seems like quite a lot of yurts; certainly more yurts per capita than anyone else has.
Living away from other people and not next to anything in particular is what I associate with nomads, the heuristic of searching a radius around landmarks doesn't make sense to me. I scrolled around a random remote desert area in Mongolia on Google Maps and found a yurt every couple of minutes.
I'm curious what the topology/architecture of the DL model is like. And are there better ways to approach this problem?