ArnholdInstitute/ColdSpots

ColdSpots is a legacy research project (over 8 years old) with negligible community engagement (5 stars). While the mission—identifying underserved populations via satellite data—is high-impact, the technical implementation is effectively obsolete. Since its inception, the field of geospatial ML has been transformed by deep learning architectures (CNNs, Vision Transformers) and massive platform-scale datasets. Current industry standards like Google Earth Engine, Microsoft Planetary Computer, and Meta's High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL) offer vastly superior, production-ready alternatives that cover the same functional requirements. The project lacks any modern defensive moat; there is no proprietary dataset, no active developer community, and the code relies on legacy patterns. Frontier labs and established geospatial companies have already integrated these capabilities into broader planetary-scale monitoring tools, making this specific repository a historical artifact rather than a viable technical asset for modern applications.