Calculating Oil Storage Tank Occupancy with Help of Satellite Imagery
8 comments
·June 15, 2025addaon
actionfromafar
It’s very true on a deep level, too. LLMs etc will smear out technology into places it never occupied before
jduckles
Did this with grain bins in the 2010s to estimate total on-farm storage capacity available in a few states.
whatshisface
What did you do with that information?
hkchad
Saw this headline and thought, HA been doing this for YEARS, yea, need to add a (2017) to the headline...
exabrial
ok so like the lid moves up and down on those? How does it seal? How does it keep from tipping sideways or jamming on the walls? fascinating
officeplant
Floating roof tank> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_floating_roof_tank
TL:DR yes there is a seal along the roof edge and alignment poles/rods so things stay flat.
I do fire suppression builds for these tanks, so all of my equipment on the tank lid has to move up and down with it as it gets filled/emptied. So we end up with self coiling cables/hoses that have to collect themselves on the lid as it fills up. Linear heat detection wire goes all the way around the rim of the tank and also along the lid, which melts and signals the alarm/suppression system in the event of a fire. Companies with more money also have us install UV/IR based flame detection.
Same with these usually having a ladder that becomes more or less stairs depending on how full the tank is.
aaron695
[dead]
Seeing people use a spreadsheet as an image measuring tool does sort of explain why there’s a group of people who seem to find so much more value in current AI than I do… if you’re using the wrong tool for the job already, a bad replacement for doing it right might still be an improvement from where you are, I suppose.