keir clarke

Mapping the Ebola outbreak in Google Earth

August 5, 2014

A few months ago we showed you some great maps that showed the spread of Ebola and MERS, but given the continued spread of Ebola we felt it’d be a good time to dig into them again.

George at MyReadingMapped has continued to update his Ebola map, showing the increasing spread of the virus. You can view his map in Google Earth by loading this KML file.

Additional Ebola-related maps can be found via this post on Google Maps Mania. Keir has found a few interesting maps around the web, including this one from Channel4.com and this one Al Jazeera.

If you find any other useful maps, please leave a comment and let us know.

Mapping Flight MH370 in Google Earth

March 17, 2014

As the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues to baffle those searching for it, tools such as this crowdsourced effort to scour satellite imagery are helping in the effort.

Along those lines, Stefan Geens at Ogle Earth has put together some impressive maps to try to narrow down where the flight may have ended up.

Through a combination of information from the Malaysian government, satellite data from Wikipedia, Malaysian military radar data, SkyVector and other sources, he’s put together an impressive KMZ file that helps compile all of that data into a single location. You can read more about Stefan’s work over on the Ogle Earth blog.

Taking it further, Keir Clarke at Google Maps Mania points us to an interesting map from CBC News that showcases dozens of planes that have gone missing without a trace in the past 50 years. As rare as events such as flight MH370 are, they’re certainly not unheard of.

Google releases the Google Maps Gallery, with solid support for Google Earth

February 28, 2014

Google has just launched the Google Maps Gallery to help “unlock the world’s maps”. It’s an impressive collection of maps of various kinds, easily accessible in one place.

The maps all have a “View in Google Earth” button to generate a KML for your use, and some of them (such as this Tokyo 1680 map) have slick transparency sliders to make them more useful. As Keir Clarke at Google Maps Mania points out, the maps are all embeddable as well and makes it somewhat like a “YouTube for maps”.

There are some great maps in there and I strongly encourage you to check it out. You can browse them all at maps.google.com/gallery/ or read more about it over on this post on the Google LatLong Blog.