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Archive for July 17th, 2015


3D cities layer: another look

by Timothy Whitehead on Jul.17, 2015, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

Last month in celebration of the ten year anniversary of Google Earth, Google added some new layers under the heading ‘Voyager’. We already had a look at the new ‘3D cities’ layer last week. However, as we showed you with the ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer, it is possible to download the layer data and import it into excel for further analysis. So today, we are doing that for the ‘3D cities’ layer. Specifically, we are interested in the population figures that are displayed in the popups.

First, we need to point out that we do not know how accurate the population figures provided are. We do not know what sources Google uses for population data. Also, we do not know to what extent the population figures correspond to the actual areas covered with 3D. There are four locations with a population of zero: two football stadiums in Brazil, Black Rock City in the US and Arches National Park in the US. There were also twenty small towns in the US with a stated population of 333. This suggests they were merely estimated. Similar patterns occur elsewhere such as three towns in Bulgaria each having a population of 6,699.


Buenos Aires, Argentina, has the largest single population figure, but this isn’t necessarily the largest population covered by a single 3D mesh, as many places have multiple triangles per mesh.

Given the above caveats here are the population figures by continent:

Continent Population % of total
Africa 1,730,976 0.5
Australia 5,980,800 1.6
Asia 33,584,272 9.3
South America 39,630,909 10.9
Europe 133,978,334 36.9
North America 147,810,132 40.8
Total 362,715,423

 

Note that South Africa is the only country represented in Africa and Japan is the only country represented in Asia. Australia and New Zealand are counted in the continent of Australia.

Here are the figures by country:

Country Population
Ireland 33,262
Serbia 37,804
Luxembourg 77,853
Montenegro 140,997
Greece 161,068
New Zealand 776,234
Netherlands 873,576
Portugal 914,069
Sweden 925,027
Croatia 1,070,016
Finland 1,154,431
Denmark 1,722,610
South Africa 1,730,976
Norway 1,862,483
Czech Republic 2,445,534
Switzerland 2,640,162
Poland 2,683,702
Belgium 2,707,986
Bulgaria 2,759,257
Austria 2,849,803
Hungary 3,268,712
Romania 4,740,262
Australia 5,204,566
Chile 5,787,730
Argentina 12,704,129
Spain 15,687,278
Canada 16,196,329
France 17,242,280
Mexico 18,493,719
United Kingdom 20,589,299
Brazil 21,139,050
Germany 21,412,939
Italy 25,977,924
Japan 33,584,272
United States 113,120,084
Total 362,715,423

 
Japan is the second largest, which is not surprising when you realise that Tokyo alone is listed as having a population of over 8 million.

The post 3D cities layer: another look appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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