japan

The Kumamoto earthquakes

May 11, 2016

Google has been pushing out imagery updates almost weekly recently. The latest update includes imagery from Kumamoto, Japan, which suffered a series of large earthquakes in April, 2016. Google has managed to capture aerial imagery not just after the event, but during the event. For example, we can see aerial imagery of the slopes of Mt Aso captured on April 15th, and again on April 16th showing that a large number of landslides took place between the images being captured.

Before and after of multiple landslides on Mt Aso, Japan.

Before and after of a landslides that swept over some houses.

A bridge and road destroyed by a landslide.

Some of the landslides channelled together to produce a mudslide at the bottom:

Mudslide caused by landslides on Mt Aso, Japan.

One hillside didn’t quite collapse, but looks very unsafe.

Large cracks across a hillside that has only slid a little bit.

The earthquakes started with a foreshock on April 14th, which struck the eastern Kumamoto suburb of Mashiki. Google was very quick to respond, as the aerial imagery is captured the following day, April 15th. The largest shock took place on April 15th, at 16:25 UTC, which is April 16th, 01:25 JST, so, after the first Google aerial image and before the second one.

Looking at Mashiki, we can see what looks like tiles missing in the roofs of buildings. It is difficult to tell just how much damage has been done. A look at this article, however, shows that many houses collapsed vertically with their roofs largely intact and the real damage was severe.

Collapsed houses in Mashiki, Japan.

In the city of Kumamoto, a bullet train was derailed, but apparently it was not carrying passengers and nobody was hurt. The imagery is dated 15th April, so it appears it was derailed by the foreshock.

Derailed bullet train.

Kumamoto Castle appears to have suffered some damage from the foreshock and then more serious damage in the main quake. There are some relatively poor quality satellite images from after the main quake.

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

Great imagery of the Sakurajima Volcano in Japan

February 1, 2013

With more than 680,000 residents within a few kilometers of it, scientists keep a close eye on Japan’s Sakurajima Volcano. A few weeks ago a new advisory was put out for the volcano and an image was captured by NASA less than an hour later. In the image you can clearly see the plume trail stretching for many miles.

You can view this image in Google Earth by loading this KML file.

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

Because of the high-resolution base imagery in the area and the 3D terrain of Google Earth, the volcano looks quite amazing even without NASA’s image laid on top of it. The imagery is from 2005, though the historical imagery in Google Earth offers part of the island with slightly newer imagery. In any case, it looks quite awesome.

You can read more about the volcano and this new imagery over on the NASA Earth Observatory site.

Japanese disaster imagery, one year later

March 12, 2012

It’s been a year since the huge earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, and Google has released fresh imagery to show the recovery made by Japan over the past 12 months.
The new imagery was captured during the past month, and covers almost the entire northeastern coastline of Japan from Hachinohe down to Hitachi City. As you can see from some of the snapshots below, the improvements made to the country in the past year are quite remarkable.
Here is a bridge from Minami Sanriku Town, Miyagi:

Another great example that Google featured was from Shiogama Port, Miyagi:

To head over there to see the imagery for yourself, simply fly to Japan in Google Earth or use this KML file

to be automatically flown to that part of the country. It’s heartwarming to see how well the rebuilding effort has been going, and hopefully they’ll be able to continue to put the pieces back into place.
(via Google Lat Long Blog)

Historical Street View imagery for Japan

December 13, 2011

One of the neatest features added to Google Earth in the past few years is the Historical Imagery added in Google Earth 5. Being able to go back in time and few older imagery is such a neat thing to do.
Now that Google is starting to roll out fresh Street View imagery around the world, we’re getting a glimpse of a somewhat similar feature in there. There’s two parts to this:
First, Google has created a special “Build the Memory” site for imagery in Japan, allowing you to see before and after shots of towns affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

It’s not a full-fledged “historical” view, since it’s only for Japan, but it’s a very neat way to see that imagery.
The also added the oft-requested feature of putting dates on the Street View imagery. It’s been a fun game to try to determine when imagery was captured, but now they tell you the month and year right on the imagery while you’re viewing it!

The dates don’t appear when you’re using Street View inside of Google Earth, but I would expect that’ll be coming in a future update.
You can read more about these updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Google adds higher-resolution, post-earthquake Japanese imagery

March 31, 2011

In the past few weeks, Google has added a ton of new data and information related to the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan. Much of that information is summarized here for you.
UPDATE In addition to the information below, Google has also pushed out a bunch of fresh historical imagery around the Fukushima Nuclear plant that everyone has been talking about. The imagery includes almost every single day immediately following the disaster. Fly there using this KML file to see it for yourself. Be sure to turn on the “historical imagery” feature, and use the (+) magnifying glass to zoom in 2011 in slider, as seen here:

However, all of that has come in the form of add-ons to Google Earth, such as image overlays. In an effort to post data quickly, that is their best option. However, Google has now made their first major update to the base layer imagery with some brand new imagery from the area around Sendai:

The imagery was collected this past Sunday and Monday, so it was very quick work for them to get it posted already! You can visit Sendai to see it for yourself by flying there using this KML file

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Google is planning to publish more fresh imagery in the near future, and you can read more about that over on their Lat Long Blog.