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Archive for February, 2017



DigitalGlobe is helping to combat slavery at sea

by Timothy Whitehead on Feb.24, 2017, 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

DigitalGlobe recently released this article which highlights the use, by the Associated Press, of high resolution imagery from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite to combat slavery on fishing ships. You can read various Associated Press stories on slavery here and a story that specifically involved DigitalGlobe imagery here. The imagery is used to not only spot suspicious behaviour, but also identify ships from their masts and other distinctive features.

DigitalGlobe correctly claims that it is currently the world leader in resolution for commercial satellite imagery. It is likely that some countries have spy satellites with better resolution. Although the article mentions WorldView-3, DigitalGlobe also has WorldView-4, which was launched late last year and has similar resolution. WorldView-4 only went into commercial use this month.

We have previously looked at Global Fishing Watch, which monitors fishing ship locations and uses that information to identify illegal fishing. Maybe they too could help identify behaviour indicative of slavery on fishing ships. Apparently fishing ships carrying slaves spend most of their time at sea and offload their catch to other ships rather than returning to port.

The post DigitalGlobe is helping to combat slavery at sea appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Exploring the Chile wildfires with Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery

by Timothy Whitehead on Feb.23, 2017, 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

Yesterday we had a look at some DigitalGlobe imagery of Chile showing the damage caused by wildfires in late January and early February this year.

We thought it would be interesting to explore the region with Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery.


Landsat imagery. Credit: USGS/NASA Landsat


Sentinel-2 Imagery. Credit: Copernicus Sentinel data, 2017.

The wildfires extended far beyond the area covered by DigitalGlobe imagery (red outlines in the first two images) and almost certainly there were more fires outside the areas shown above, but we did not have time to gather imagery for the whole country. The southernmost Sentinel-2 image was captured earlier than the others and shows at least two wildfires still in progress. Both Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery clearly show the areas affected by the wildfires and we have outlined them below.

Unfortunately the imagery above is too large for us to share as a KML on this blog.

To obtain the imagery, we started with our KMLs that show previews of Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery. Once we have selected a suitable image that covers the region of interest in the right date range and without excessive cloud cover, we download the key files from Amazon AWS. For Landsat imagery you need bands 2, 3, 4 and 8 and for Sentinel-2 just bands 2, 3 and 4. We then used GeoSage’s ‘Spectral Discovery’ tools (Landsat Sentinel-2) to process the imagery. An alternative method is to use GIMP or any other suitable image processing tool. GeoSage’s tools certainly make the process much easier, but one downside is the colour processing is automatic, which resulted in significantly different colours for the three Sentinel images.

Obtaining and processing Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery has certainly become easier over time, with both AWS and Google Cloud hosting the imagery archives. However, what is sorely needed is for a provider to pre-process the imagery and even better would be to then provide it in tiled format. Doing so would change the two public sources of imagery from a niche product mostly used by GIS professionals to a public resource readily available to all.

The post Exploring the Chile wildfires with Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Google Earth imagery update, earthquake and fire

by Timothy Whitehead on Feb.22, 2017, 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

Google has recently updated the ‘historical imagery’ layer in Google Earth. Unfortunately, because the Google Earth Plugin/API was shut down last month we can no longer make maps of imagery updates.

The Kaikoura earthquake, New Zealand
On November 14th, 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the South Island of New Zealand with an epicentre near the town of Kaikoura. We have previously had a look at the resulting landslides as seen in low resolution Sentinel-2 imagery. Now Google has added some DigitalGlobe imagery of the region captured soon after the earthquake. Most of the imagery is black and white, but we can clearly see landslides that blocked the coastal roads out from Kaikoura.

Wildfires, Chile
In late January and early February, 2017, Chile was ravaged by what have been called the worst wildfires in its modern history. There are a number of black and white DigitalGlobe images of the region, but unfortunately they do not cover the worst affected areas. We did, however, manage to find a number of burnt buildings and a fire still burning.


A wildfire in Chile.

before
after

Before and after of some buildings destroyed by wildfire in Chile.

The map data for that region of Chile is not good at all. There are a number of ‘town’ markers in Google Earth that point to locations where there are only one or two houses or no buildings at all. Meanwhile, the town of Santa Olga, which was devastated by the fire and which we found with the aid of Wikipedia, has no marker at all and could not even be found through search.

Other locations
There is a low quality image of Washington D.C., United States, dated January 19th, the day before the presidential inauguration.

There is an image of Manila in the Philippines relating to a shanty town fire that left 15,000 people homeless. The image quality is so poor that not much can be seen. We think we were able to identify the location based on a church that can be seen in one of the photos.

To find the locations mentioned above in Google Earth download this KML file.

A big thank you to GEB reader André who sent us a list of locations he has found that now have 2017 imagery:

Africa
Angola – Malange – 2017-01-16
Angola – Menongue – 2017-01-06
Angola – Xangongo – 2017-01-10
Algeria – Mecheria – 2017-01-17
Ethiopia – East of Bishoftu – 2017-01-13
Kenya – Nanyuki – 2017-01-07
Nigeria – Makurdi – 2017-01-05
Nigeria – Ibadan – 2017-01-01
Nigeria – Ilorin – 2017-01-02
Rwanda – Kigali – 2017-01-15
Uganda – Entebbe – 2017-01-18

Asia
Bangladesh – Dhaka – 2017-01-12/18
Bangladesh – Jessore – 2017-01-19
Cambodia – Kampong – 2017-01-01
Indonesia – Banda Aceh – 2017-01-10
Indonesia – Subang – 2017-01-01
Myanmar – Pyay – 2017-01-16
Myanmar – Loikaw – 2017-01-18
Myanmar – Hainggyikyun – 2017-01-03
Myanmar – Pakokku – 2017-01-02
Myanmar – Magway – 2017-01-02
Taiwan – Taipei – 2017-01-02

Middle East
Bahrain – Manama – 2017-01-03
Iran – Gachsaran – 2017-01-04
Iran – Dezful – 2017-01-23
Kuwait – Kuwait City – 2017-01-14

Americas
Cuba – South of Havana – 2017-01-18
Cuba – San Pedro – 2017-01-26
Dominican Republic – Santo Domingo – 2017-01-25
Guatemala – Quetzaltenango – 2017-01-09
Guatemala – Guatemala City – 2017-01-03/22
Guatemala – Retalhuleu – 2017-01-02
Honduras – Comayagua – 2017-01-06
Honduras – Trujillo – 2017-01-06
Panama – David – 2017-01-07
Venezuela – Barquisimeto – 2017-01-02

The post Google Earth imagery update, earthquake and fire appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Chill dogs having fun

by StreetViewFun.com on Feb.22, 2017, 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

We’re taking a look at all the funny dogs we’ve found on Google Street View in our latest YouTube video. Watch video
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