The Slavery Observatory

Credit for the mural image (being used by the Rights Lab): Joel Bergner and local partners 

My work forms part of the Rights Lab's 'Slavery Observatory' project at the University of Nottingham; and we were recently asked to write a piece for the PeaceTech Roundup on the work of the research group. You can read the fully edited and published piece here. In order to provide some additional detail on the work the project has completed so far and the future goals, the initial draft that was produced by Dr Jessica Wardlaw (@SpaceGeographer) and myself about the project has been published here on this platform. See below:

History:

The International Labour Organization (2017) estimates that 40.3 million people are involved in modern slavery and forced marriage practices globally; the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a target that aims to bring these practices to an end by 2030 - target 8.7 - and drives our work. Prof. Kevin Bales first mooted the idea of using satellite imagery after coming across the work of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).The increasing availability of (free) open source satellite data products and processing software for satellite imagery analysis offers us the opportunity to use these data types to investigate industries where modern slavery is prevalent in order to support Agenda 2030.

Summary of the project:

Remote locations, conflict and politically unstable areas can make it difficult to locate and monitor sites of contemporary slave labour on the ground. Whilst a free worker cannot be distinguished from an enslaved worker from space, satellite data can reveal the location of illegal, potentially slave-based work is occurring (Bales, 2007).

The Slavery Observatory at the Rights Lab is helping to detect and prevent slavery by developing innovative methods that use both computers and online volunteers to identify possible sites of slavery in satellite imagery. Our crowdsourced data is already prompting experts to rethink the number of brick kilns in Asia’s 'Brick Belt', where slavery is endemic; we currently partner with the satellite data company DigitalGlobe to cover large areas (Slavery from Space: Punjab). We also have projects that are developing machine learning for similar purposes.

Future goals:

The number of industries in which slavery-practices occur are widespread and a number of these industries are visible from satellite imagery. 

'Next we want to develop the idea to map other activities using slavery, including mining and charcoal camps.' - Dr Doreen Boyd (University of Nottingham). 

Our future work at The Slavery Observatory therefore includes the development and expansion of machine learning techniques to locate industries known to use slave-labour. A combination of this information with the data gathered through crowd-sourcing initiatives can provide detailed information on industries that partner NGOs investigate on the ground so that their processes may be more efficient. Additional information gathered using satellite remote sensing analysis can directly impact the decision-making processes on the ground and support SDG 8.7 (Boyd et al. 2018).

You can find out more about the 'Slavery Observatory' project here. And subscribe to the PeaceTech Roundup here. 

References 

Bales, K. (2007). Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Boyd, D.S., et al. (2018) Slavery from Space: Demonstrating the role for satellite remote sensing to inform evidence-based action related to UN SDG number 8. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

International Labour Organization (2017) Global estimates of modern slavery: Forced labour and forced marriage. International Labour Office (ILO), Geneva.