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As we mentioned last week Google recently did an imagery update. The fresh imagery has now been pushed to ‘historical imagery’ and we are looking at three floods around the world.

Lima, Peru
We mentioned Lima, Peru in a previous imagery update. At that time, the imagery was from just before the worst floods. 2017 has seen heavy rains in much of South America with significant flooding in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. According to Wikipedia, more than 115,000 homes were demolished, leaving approximately 178,000 people homeless. A total of 113 people were killed, 354 were injured, and a further 18 were missing.

The Rímac River flows through Lima and you can see it forming a delta in February and March.

Speed in milliseconds per image:
Rímac River delta forming in Lima, Peru.

Rímac River, Lima, Peru. In the photo, a foot bridge is partially flooded and a road is damaged. However, we believe that at the height of the floods, most of the surrounding roads were flooded.

New Zealand. Cyclone Debbie.
Cyclone Debbie caused major flooding across the eastern coast of Australia and parts of New Zealand. Last week we had a look at Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia using Sentinel-2 imagery. Below we see some flooding around Edgecumbe, North Island, New Zealand.

Flooding around Edgecumbe, New Zealand.

A closeup of Edgecumbe, New Zealand.

Madagascar – Tropical Cyclone Enawo
Tropical Cyclone Enawo passed over Madagascar in early March causing major flooding along the eastern coast. DigitalGlobe released some spectacular images which, unfortunately, haven’t made their way into Google Earth. However, there is quite a lot of fresh DigitalGlobe imagery, mostly from after the worst of the flooding along the coast. We only found one image captured during the flood:

The region around Maroantsetra, Madagascar

A close up of some houses up-river from Maroantsetra, Madagascar

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

The post Google Earth Imagery Update – Floods around the World appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Last week Google updated the historical imagery in Google Earth. It was a somewhat disappointing update for a number of reasons:

• Due to the demise of the Google Earth API/plugin, we no longer have a way to find all recent imagery.
• Tropical Cyclone Enawo, caused major flooding in Madagascar in March, 2017, and DigitalGlobe released stunning imagery of the event via their open data program. Given that the imagery was released to the public domain, we are a bit disappointed that it doesn’t seem to have made it into Google Earth. DigitalGlobe provides the imagery for download but it consists of very large files that are not easy to explore.
• A flooding event in Lima, Peru was just missed, with imagery being added that is from just a few days before the event.
• There is some imagery of flooding in the Philippines, but because there are two images captured on the same day, one of them, which we believe may be the better quality one, cannot be viewed in its entirety because of a flaw in Google Earth’s ‘historical imagery’ that we have noted before. We hope Google implements a solution to this when they add historical imagery to the new browser based Google Earth.

Plane crash in Pakistan.
On 7th December, 2016, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 661 crashed into a mountainside killing all 47 people on board. We can just make out the wreckage of the plane and we can also see the blackened mountainside due to a wildfire started by the crash. Read more about it on Wikipedia and see some images here.

Koshe Landfill landslide – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
On March 11th, 2017, there was a landslide at the Koshe Landfill site in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, burying some nearby makeshift houses in rubbish and killing 113 people. Read more on Wikipedia and the Landslide Blog. There is a DigitalGlobe image captured on the day of the disaster, but we are not sure whether it was captured before or after the event. Below is a ‘before and after’ of the location and we couldn’t identify any houses missing in the ‘after’ image. Keep in mind that the images are captured from different angles so there is some distortion.

‘Before and After’, Koshe Landfill landslide – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Also of note, an image of Oroville Dam that we have looked at previously via DigitalGlobe, is now in historical imagery.

To find the locations mentioned above download this KML file.

The post Google Earth Imagery Update – Plane Crash in Pakistan and Landslide in Ethiopia appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Google has recently done an imagery update. Here are a few sights we have found so far.

Plane crash in Kyrgyzstan
On January 16, 2017, a Turkish cargo plane, Turkish Airlines Flight 6491, crashed into a residential area just short of the runway of Manas International Airport, Kyrgyzstan. All four crew members and 35 people on the ground were killed in the crash. Read more about it here and on Wikipedia.

The aircraft was travelling from left to right in the above image.

Zooming out a bit we can see how close it was to getting to the runway.

Derailed train in Cameroon
On October 21st, 2016, a passenger train derailed in Eséka, Cameroon, killing at least 79 people and injuring 550. The DigitalGlobe image was captured ten days later so some cleanup has already been done, but we can see where the accident happened and some of the carriages by the side of the track. There are more carriages next to the station which may have already been transported there from the accident site. Read more about it here and on Wikipedia.

 
Fireworks explosion in Mexico
On December 20th, 2016, a fireworks explosion occurred at the San Pablito Market in the city of Tultepec, Mexico, killing at least 36 and injuring 84. The imagery is from January 4th, and the area has been cleaned up. See a video here and read about it on Wikipedia

Before and after of the San Pablito Market.

World Series parade, Chicago
The Chicago Cubs, a Major League Baseball club, won the 2016 World Series after a 108-year drought. To celebrate they held a parade on November 4th, 2016, which was attended by an estimated 5 million people. DigitalGlobe captured an image showing the crowds in Grant Park, the final destination of the parade.

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

The post Google Earth Imagery Update – Plane Crash, Derailed Train, Fireworks Explosion and World Series appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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 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.

Google has recently updated the ‘historical layer’, this time including the southern hemisphere, which we previously noted had been missed in the last update. Unfortunately, due to the recent demise of the Google Earth plugin/API we are unable to create a map of the updates. However, we can still track down some interesting sights where the imagery was captured as part of DigitalGlobe’s FirstLook program.

Google has also pushed out a large number of new 3D areas.

Crater?
There is some imagery on the east coast of India dated December 3rd, 2016, which was captured in response to cyclone NADA-16 which made landfall in late November. Although it does look wetter than usual, it is a naturally we region with a lot of lakes and flooded fields and we didn’t find any flooded houses. We did, however, come across the circular feature below:

Do any of our readers know whether this is an impact crater or some other geological phenomenon?

Indonesian Earthquake
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck Aceh province, Indonesia, on December 7th, 2016. There is quite a lot of DigitalGlobe imagery of the region from December and January. According to Wikipedia 104 people were killed and over 1000 injured. Although it was reported that 686 structures were either destroyed or damaged, we were not able to positively identify any in the imagery as it is not very high resolution.

Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race
There is some black and white imagery of Sydney harbour relating to the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which took place on December 26th, 2016. As far as we can tell, the actual race was not captured in the imagery.

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

If you come across any interesting sights in the imagery do let us know in the comments.

The post Google Earth imagery update appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Earlier this week we released maps showing the imagery updates of 2016 according to the ‘historical imagery’ layer. The maps were created using the Google Earth Plugin/API, which Google has since shut down. It was scheduled to be shut down on January 11th. It was still working yesterday, January 12th, but is not today, January 13th.

Southern Hemisphere
The first thing to note about the maps of ‘historical imagery’ is that there is no imagery in the southern Hemisphere from July onwards. This is not because Google is not adding fresh imagery there, but because it only updated the ‘historical imagery’ layer for the Northern Hemisphere. During the first half of 2016, Google was updating ‘historical imagery’ almost weekly, but in mid-July they stopped and didn’t update it again until late December, but apparently only updated the Northern Hemisphere. They have been doing imagery updates for the Southern Hemisphere, but they can only be seen in the default layer.

Types of imagery
Google gathers aerial imagery for some parts of the world. We believe it collects the imagery itself as the imagery shows no attributions other than Google. There is also this page suggesting it sells aerial imagery, too. Aerial imagery can typically be identified by the size of the imagery patches. They tend to be large rectangles as opposed to the smaller rectangles or strips of satellite imagery. Aerial imagery is used almost exclusively for:

• The continental United States.
• Western Europe, excluding the Scandinavian countries.
• Japan.

A few countries have received a mix of both satellite and aerial imagery:

• Ireland
• New Zealand
• Australia.

If you see Google aerial imagery from 2016 anywhere else, please let us know in the comments.

Satellite imagery all seems to come from two suppliers, DigitalGlobe and CNES/Astrum.

Reasons for imagery
Aerial imagery, especially in the US, appears to be gathered on a schedule, with the US being covered approximately once every three years. Satellite imagery appears to be gathered for three basic reasons:

1. To capture particular events. DigitalGlobe’s ‘FirstLook’ program gathers imagery of natural disasters, man-made disasters, political instability and human interest. See the FirstLook map to get an idea of what is covered. Most FirstLook imagery eventually makes its way into Google Earth. We have covered a number of these locations in previous posts. Imagery gathered for particular events tends to be of poorer quality, sometimes being black and white or false colour and having a high percentage of cloud cover.
2. Particular locations of interest to the suppliers DigitalGlobe and CNES Astrum. This is especially noticeable with DigitalGlobe imagery, which is gathered very regularly for certain locations, usually cities.
3. Random locations where the imagery suppliers managed to get good quality imagery because weather conditions were just right.

We do not know whether or not Google ever makes special orders for satellite imagery or what their agreements are with the satellite imagery suppliers.

Weather
Weather plays an important role in the gathering of imagery. Google avoids snow cover and cloud cover where possible, both of which are quite seasonal. This results in a curious pattern of imagery gathering, which you can see in this map.

Population
Sparsely populated areas such as mountains and deserts typically get a lot less imagery than highly populated areas.

Censorship
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and the Ukraine are censored and got no updated imagery during 2016. We do not know how the censorship is achieved, but it is most likely not up to Google. Our guess is that the satellite imagery providers have been paid to not supply imagery to Google for those countries. Imagery is being gathered, and it would appear that you can buy imagery for those countries via TerraServer and other suppliers.

India and Pakistan got good coverage for 2016.

The post Observations about the 2016 ‘historical imagery’ updates appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Today we are releasing our map of Google Earth imagery updates for 2016. Download this KML file to see it in Google Earth.

Let us know in the comments if you find any interesting sights that we have not yet covered.

Eastern Europe got noticeably more imagery than Western Europe. We guess this is because Western Europe mostly already has high quality aerial imagery. Most of the updated imagery in Western Europe is aerial imagery attributed to Google and we believe gathered by Google.

The Ukraine is an exception as it is still censored along with Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, none of which received new imagery in 2016.

The maps show the approximate locations of imagery updates from January to November 2016 classified by month. As far as we know there are no December images yet in ‘historical imagery’. The maps are created using the Google Earth API / plugin, which is set to be shut down a couple of days from now (January 11th, 2017).

There is some recent imagery in Google Earth that has not yet made it to ‘historical imagery’, which is not included in the maps. Also keep in mind that Google sometimes adds old imagery, so during the course of 2016 they would have added quite a lot of 2015 or older imagery which is not included in these maps and in the future they will add more 2016 imagery.

Speed in milliseconds per image:

Imagery updates dated 2016, January to November

Speed up the animation by dragging the slider to the left to better see the seasonality of imagery, a topic we have discussed a few times in the past:
Preferred seasons for gathering imagery
2015 imagery updates animated

The post Google Earth imagery update outlines for 2016 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Google has recently pushed out another imagery update. We created maps for March, April and May imagery, but did not find any significant changes in the March and April maps since the last update a week ago. There is, however, quite a lot of new May imagery.

May imagery. Red: Recently added imagery. Blue: imagery as of May 29th.

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

We haven’t been able to find any major events captured in the new imagery, but we did come across a strange image in the Sahara. It is in the south of Algeria and covers an area that has not previously been imaged with high resolution imagery.

We can see nothing of particular interest in the imagery, with half of the area being obscured by clouds, and no distinguishable features on the ground. Although it is hard to judge resolution, we think it is lower resolution than the nearby DigitalGlobe image. At first sight it appears to consist of three parallel strips, but the clouds all line up which would not be the case if it was three consecutive passes of a satellite, so we suspect it is all one image or three images captured in one pass. It also has no attribution (the NASA attribution is for the very low resolution background image).

Or first guess is a low altitude, relatively low resolution satellite, such as are used by Google’s own Terra Bella (formerly Skybox Imaging) and Planet Labs.

The strips are at a different angle from most satellite imagery which tends to be nearly aligned in a north-south direction. Strips of other alignments do exist but we believe they are typically for newly launched satellites that have not yet moved to a polar orbit. Near polar orbits tend to be preferred as it provides greater coverage. We do not know if this is the case for companies like Planet Labs which has large numbers of satellites.

If any of our readers know anything more about the origin of this imagery, please let us know in the comments.

Find it in Google Earth with this KML file.

The post Google Earth Imagery Update: Strange image in the Sahara appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Google has done another imagery update. We have mapped out the approximate locations of imagery for March, April and May, 2016 and show the additions since the last update, which was just a week ago.

May imagery. Red:Recently added imagery. Blue:imagery as of May 29th.

April imagery. Red:Recently added imagery. Blue:imagery as of May 29th.

March imagery. Red:Recently added imagery. Blue:imagery as of May 29th.

To view the outlines in Google Earth download this KML file. Note that these are fairly low resolution maps so the outlines are larger than the actual imagery.

Thank you to GEB reader Ben Reuter for letting us know in the comments of our month end post that there is new imagery of the Russian naval yard at Severodvinsk showing what he says is Russian submarine BS-64.

Possibly Russian submarine BS-64. April 28th, 2016.

There is also a slightly newer image:

Possibly Russian submarine BS-64. May 16th, 2016.

Ben says it is the world’s longest submarine. However, according to Wikipedia, BS-64 is 167 m whereas it lists Russian Typhoon-class submarines at 175 m. Within the same naval yard are what we believe are three different Typhoon-class submarines, possibly TK-208, TK20 and TK17.

Possibly Russian submarine TK-208 (the larger sub in the image)

Possibly Russian submarines TK-20 and TK-17

Measuring them with the Google Earth ruler we get:
BS-64 at 169.5 m
TK-208 at 170 m
TK-20 at 165 m
TK-17 at 165 m

Keep in mind that there may be extra length underwater and we are only measuring the visible parts. In addition, TK-208, TK20 and TK17 all have the exact same body length, but the rudder part seems a bit longer on TK 208, we think because it is a bit higher in the water, exposing parts that are submerged in the other two.

Based on historical imagery, it would appear TK20 and TK17 have not been moved since 2009 and even have 3D models of them in that position, and if you turn on the Panaromio layer there are a couple of photos taken on board one of them.

So, do any of our readers know which of these submarines are still in active duty of some sort? Secondly, which is truly the longest and are they all four, longer than any other submarines in the world?

To find the submarines in Google Earth download this KML file. Be sure to look around as there are other smaller submarines too!

Also of interest, the Wikipedia page shows a declassified satellite image of a Typhoon-class submarine berthed where we think TK-208 is now. It was captured in 1982. It is interesting to compare the state of the art satellite imagery available only to governments at that time, and classified “Top Secret”, whereas now we have better quality imagery (although surprisingly not that much better) freely available to the public.

The post Google Earth Imagery Update: Russian submarines appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Google has recently pushed out another imagery update. We have mapped out the approximate locations of imagery for March, April and May, 2016. The last update we did maps for was this one. There was a minor update since then, but we did not generate maps other than identifying that there was only one image from May at the time and it was of the Fort McMurray wildfire.

May imagery

March imagery. Red:Recently added imagery. Blue:imagery as of May 10th.

April imagery. Red:Recently added imagery. Blue:imagery as of May 10th.

To view the outlines in Google Earth download this KML file.

On February 23rd, 2016, a tornado struck LaPlace, Louisiana. It was one of an outbreak of 60 tornadoes that struck over two days. It was a relatively mild tornado measuring EF2. The imagery is from April 7th, 2016, so more than a month after the tornado struck.

The path of the tornado. It didn’t leave much of a track visible from this altitude.

Zoom in a bit and notice the blue rooftops marking out that path the tornado took!

Most of the damage seems to have been at least temporarily repairable with blue roof tarpaulins. However, some completely destroyed houses can be seen.

Do any of our readers know why blue is the preferred colour for roof repair tarpaulins?

Be sure to explore it in Google Earth with this KML file.

The post Google Earth Imagery Update: LaPlace tornado appeared first on Google Earth Blog.