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imagery update

Google Earth Imagery Update – Floods around the World

May 8, 2017

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.


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

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: flood, imagery update, madagascar, new zealand, peru

Google Earth Imagery Update – Plane Crash in Pakistan and Landslide in Ethiopia

April 27, 2017

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
after

‘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.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: ethiopia, imagery update, pakistan

Google Earth Imagery Update – Plane Crash, Derailed Train, Fireworks Explosion and World Series

March 14, 2017

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
after

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.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: imagery update

Google Earth imagery update, earthquake and fire

February 22, 2017

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

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: imagery update

Google Earth imagery update

February 3, 2017

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.

Filed Under: Site News Tagged With: imagery update

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