Vertical GeoSolutions

The following Post was located on the Google Earth Blog on Jan 13, 2010 and is located here: Link

Imagery Layer for Haiti Earthquake has been released

Google has been working with GeoEye over the last 24 hours to get fresh imagery from Haiti to help aid relief efforts. They’ve just released a KML file for it, which you’re encouraged to download. The file is actually a network link, so Google can push additional imagery to you without having to release another KML.

The imagery is remarkably sharp, and shows some amazing scenes such a a soccer field turned into a make-shift camp (shown above), and smoke continuing to billow out of some buildings.

Google has done similar things in the past, with events such as the Myanmar Cyclone or Hurricane Katrina.

In addition to the KML file, Google has set up a crisis response page for the earthquake with lots of information. Specifically, those that are able are encouraged to give donations to help rebuild lives and communities.

Thanks to the Free Geography Tools Blog (www.freegeographytools.com) for posting on the CIA World FactBook availability in KML format.  The CIA FactBook is a great source for information on manydifferent topics.  As a former Air force navigator I would use the CIA World FactBook whenever I would travel overseas to a new country in order to get an idea of what the country was like.  The KML version of the World FactBook is located at: http://www.kmlfactbook.org/, and is a great tool.  There are several pre-defined reports  you can run with 2-D, 3-D, and Pie Chart outputs visualized by Google Earth.  Try it out.

Thanks to the Free Geography Tools Blog for pointing me to the free online KML to Shapefile Converter offered by Zonums Software.  The download version has some bugs in it, but the online version is good to use.  It is free to use and can be found here:

http://www.zonums.com/online/kml2shp.php

How many times have you found something great on Google Earth and would like to show the same feature in your GIS?  This online application allows you to do that.  It is a great tool.

The below post in the Google LatLong Blog is a revolutionary concept.  Google has taken a huge market share of organizing the world’s data by offering free tools that most of us use.  Google’s tools seem to work better than those that we pay top dollar for.  Now they are offering to serve up partners imagery for free.  That is an incredible offer.    I can hardly wait to see the results.  Municipalities can get their imagery served up for free which will dramatically increase the quality of the images on Google Earth and Maps.  That is a win/win situation for everyone.  Bravo for Google.

Posted by Rick Marshall

Taking in the view: Introducing Google’s Imagery Partner Program

Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 12:05 PM

When people think about Google Earth, they often think satellite imagery.  Yet, since the early days of Google Earth, we’ve been working with local governments and other public sector organizations to add their aerial imagery as well.  Thanks to this data sharing, we’re able to offer our users a more current representation of thousands of communities and a higher resolution view of countless geographic features.  With this week’s launch of the historical imagery feature in Google Earth, we’re now able to partner with public sector organizations and other imagery content providers to present users a view of their community or geographic features, such as mountains or lakes, evolving over time.

For organizations that would like to share their aerial imagery, we’ve just put out the welcome mat — a new website for our Imagery Partner Program where you can learn the ins and outs of adding your organization’s imagery to Google’s services.  As you’ll see, we’ve learned from our partnerships with many governments and have structured this program to make it as easy as possible for your organization to license and deliver your data to Google.  Wondering what aerial imagery formats we welcome or how we handle data transfer or other details?  Visit the site and check out the FAQ.

As reported by Frank Taylor of the Google Earth Blog

Here is some visual delights showing new features of Google Earth 5 by video (including three I created and added to my posts yesterday). You can download Google Earth 5 for free and try these features out yourself. Check out GEB’s main post on GE 5 which includes links to other feature stories.

Google’s official announcement video:

Sylvia Earle - Oceanographer from National Geographic Society introduces Google Earth 5’s Ocean Data:

Google Earth Blog’s first look at Google Earth 5’s Ocean (below the fold):

As reported by Leszek Pawlowicz of the Free Geography Tools Blog

A few months ago, Google discontinued Google Earth Plus, their $20/year augmented version of Google Earth. At the time, they said they would add one of Plus’s key features, support for direct connection of a GPS receiver, to the free version in the near future. With this week’s release of Google Earth 5.0, lots of [...]