In a March 1th 2020 article at IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Tekla S. Perry
reports on how researchers at WeBank mine satellite, GPS, and social
media data to conclude that the Chinese economy is well on the way to
recovering from COVID-19.
The team used its neural network and deep-learning to analyze visible,
near-infrared, and short-wave infrared images from various satellites.
Hot spots from steel manufacturing plants had indicated production
dropped to 29% but is now back at 76%.
They counted cars in corporate parking lots.
Telsa's Shanghai car production had fully recovered but Shanghai
Disneyland was still closed.
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Originally Posted by Tekla S. Perry, IEEE Spectrum Magazine
Projecting out from these curves, the researchers concluded that most Chinese workers, with the exception of Wuhan, will be back to work by the end of March. Economic growth in the first quarter, their study indicated, will take a 36 percent hit.
Finally, the team used natural language processing technology to mine Twitter-like services and other social media platforms for mentions of companies that provide online working, gaming, education, streaming video, social networking, e-commerce, and express delivery services. According to this analysis, telecommuting for work is booming, up 537 percent from the first day of 2020; online education is up 169 percent; gaming is up 124 percent; video streaming is up 55 percent; social networking is up 47 percent. Meanwhile, e-commerce is flat, and express delivery is down a little less than 1 percent. The analysis of China’s social media activity also yielded the prediction that the Chinese economy will be mostly back to normal by the end of March.
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Full article here :-
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-...to-coronavirus
