New Google Earth layers

3D cities layer: another look

July 17, 2015

Last month in celebration of the ten year anniversary of Google Earth, Google added some new layers under the heading ‘Voyager’. We already had a look at the new ‘3D cities’ layer last week. However, as we showed you with the ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer, it is possible to download the layer data and import it into excel for further analysis. So today, we are doing that for the ‘3D cities’ layer. Specifically, we are interested in the population figures that are displayed in the popups.

First, we need to point out that we do not know how accurate the population figures provided are. We do not know what sources Google uses for population data. Also, we do not know to what extent the population figures correspond to the actual areas covered with 3D. There are four locations with a population of zero: two football stadiums in Brazil, Black Rock City in the US and Arches National Park in the US. There were also twenty small towns in the US with a stated population of 333. This suggests they were merely estimated. Similar patterns occur elsewhere such as three towns in Bulgaria each having a population of 6,699.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, has the largest single population figure, but this isn’t necessarily the largest population covered by a single 3D mesh, as many places have multiple triangles per mesh.

Given the above caveats here are the population figures by continent:

Continent	Population	% of total
Africa	1,730,976	0.5
Australia	5,980,800	1.6
Asia	33,584,272	9.3
South America	39,630,909	10.9
Europe	133,978,334	36.9
North America	147,810,132	40.8
Total	362,715,423

Note that South Africa is the only country represented in Africa and Japan is the only country represented in Asia. Australia and New Zealand are counted in the continent of Australia.

Here are the figures by country:

Country	Population
Ireland	33,262
Serbia	37,804
Luxembourg	77,853
Montenegro	140,997
Greece	161,068
New Zealand	776,234
Netherlands	873,576
Portugal	914,069
Sweden	925,027
Croatia	1,070,016
Finland	1,154,431
Denmark	1,722,610
South Africa	1,730,976
Norway	1,862,483
Czech Republic	2,445,534
Switzerland	2,640,162
Poland	2,683,702
Belgium	2,707,986
Bulgaria	2,759,257
Austria	2,849,803
Hungary	3,268,712
Romania	4,740,262
Australia	5,204,566
Chile	5,787,730
Argentina	12,704,129
Spain	15,687,278
Canada	16,196,329
France	17,242,280
Mexico	18,493,719
United Kingdom	20,589,299
Brazil	21,139,050
Germany	21,412,939
Italy	25,977,924
Japan	33,584,272
United States	113,120,084
Total	362,715,423

Japan is the second largest, which is not surprising when you realise that Tokyo alone is listed as having a population of over 8 million.

Satellite imagery updates layer: another look

July 13, 2015

A couple of weeks ago we had a look at Google Earth’s new ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer. One notable feature of the new layers is that they can be put into your ‘My Places’ and then exported to KML. Previously, Google would release update maps via a Google map. Although it was possible to view it in Google Earth, there was no way to save it as KML. Today, we are having a look at what sort of things can be done when you have direct access to the data.

In our previous post on this layer we used this website to extract the areas of the different images and then used MS Excel to work out the total areas of the new imagery by continent:

Continent	Area (sq. km)
Asia	342,988
North America	314,332
Africa	125,841
Europe	100,481
South America	43,019
Australia	20,346
Oceans & Islands	6,098
Total	953,104

Another thing we can do is get the dates of the imagery into Excel. To do this, we exported each continent as a KML file, renamed them to *.xml and then opened them in Excel as XML files. We then combined them into one spreadsheet.

Now we can find out which is the oldest and newest image in the collection. The oldest is a strip of imagery captured on November 5th 2010, in Tibet, China. This is one of many old images in the region that were added by Google to help aid workers in the region in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake. The newest is a pair of images captured on June 5th, 2015, in Hunan Province, China.

We can also get a better overall picture of the age of the imagery by counting the images by year:

Year	# of images
2010	4
2011	6
2012	19
2013	16
2014	41
2015	767

and breaking 2015 down into months:

Month	# of images
January, 2015	1
February, 2015	5
March, 2015	19
April, 2015	259
May, 2015	459
June, 2015	24

Another fun thing we can do is reproduce the KML colour coded by date. We had to figure out how to export XML from Excel, and with a little help with the colour scheme from this site we were able to produce this KML file. So download it now and try it out!

We would love it if Google were to include in the metadata the imagery provider and whether it is satellite imagery or aerial imagery.

New Google Earth layers suggestion: What’s that image?

July 8, 2015

Over the last few posts we have been having a look at Google Earth’s new layers that make up the new ‘Voyager’ layer:
‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer
‘Earth View landscapes’ layer
‘Street View highlights’ layer
‘3D cities’ layer

Today, we would like to suggest a new layer to Google that would fit well in the Voyager layer. The new layer we are thinking of would feature Placemarks around the world highlighting interesting things that can be seen in specific images. We are not thinking of the sort of things that Google Earth users can find for themselves and make collections of, as such collections already exist on the Google Earth Community, which already has its own layer (found in the Gallery layer). Instead, we are thinking of particular events for which satellite or aerial imagery was specially captured, but may not at first be obvious to the casual user.

Google adds imagery to Google Earth for two basic reasons. The first and most common, is to improve coverage and provide a history of coverage with ‘historical imagery’. The second is when there is something of particular interest in the imagery. This type of imagery is often fairly easy to pick out, as it consists of poor quality imagery, such as containing high levels of cloud cover, or being in black and white, and often there will be a number of images of a particular place over a short space of time.

The best examples of this type of imagery are the images showing tornado damage in the USA. For examples see this post and you can find the locations in Google Earth using this KML file.

We have found other examples by using DigitalGlobe’s ‘First Look’ coverage map. However, it can be quite tedious to find each location in Google Earth and then check whether Google has obtained the specific imagery.

A black & white image featuring the Isle of Wight Festival on June 11th, 2015 – discovered via DigitalGlobe’s first look map

We recently came across an image of Paris, captured on June 3rd, 2015. The image is in black & white and has high levels of cloud cover. We strongly suspect it contains something of particular interest, but we don’t know what. Google, however, presumably knows what is to be seen in the imagery they add. Otherwise they wouldn’t be adding poor quality imagery to the database.

So, to give an example of a few of the types of Placemarks we would expect to see in such a layer, see this KML file.

New Google Earth layers: 3D Cities

July 7, 2015

Last week, in honour of Google Earth’s 10 year anniversary, Google added a new collection of layers known as Voyager. We have already had a look at the ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer, the ‘Earth View landscapes’ layer, and the ‘Street View highlights’ layer. Today we are looking at the ‘3D cities’ layer.

The new ‘3D cities’ layer shows the locations where Google Earth has the automatically generated 3D mesh that Google has been rolling out since 2012. In the past, it was difficult to find which areas had the new 3D. There was a list maintained on Wikipedia but there was no way to view it as a KML in Google Earth. So last September we at GEB created a KML with the outlines of the areas with 3D. We have since maintained it, thanks to the help of GEB readers, who spot new imagery and let us know in the comments of this post. Most of the hard work of outlining the newly discovered areas is being done by GEB reader Anton Rudolfsson. Also thanks to an idea from Anton, we display the imagery colour coded by when it was first discovered (which roughly corresponds to when it was first added by Google), so you can get an idea of how progress is going and also spot the latest additions easily.

Google Earth users who are not readers of GEB, or have not seen our KML, may be surprised by the new layer, as most users do not realize just how much 3D Google has managed to generate or how widespread around the globe it is. Having said that, coverage in Africa and Asia is still sorely lacking, although South Africa did recently start getting coverage.

It is not immediately obvious, but the new layer features two different icons. There are filled in triangles with a point at the top, which indicate ‘Existing coverage’, and triangles with just an outline with the point at the bottom which indicate ‘Latest updates’. Note that this does not necessarily correspond to the age of the actual imagery.

We do like the heat map effect Google has managed to achieve with the new layer.

The GEB maintained version has more information, for those interested in getting into the details. Download our KML file here.

New Google Earth layers: Street View highlights

July 3, 2015

On Monday, in honour of Google Earth’s 10 year anniversary, Google added a new collection of layers known as Voyager. We have already looked at the ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer and the ‘Earth View landscapes’ layer. Today we are looking at the ‘Street View highlights’ layer.

The ‘Street View highlights’ layer is a collection of Placemarks highlighting interesting sights to be found in Street View. The locations are mostly off-road locations that you would not normally find when simply looking at Street View in Google Earth. It does not include the sort of collections often found on the web of interesting things inadvertently caught by the Street View cameras. On a side note, Google has recently closed down the old version of Street View breaking many sites that have links to Street View imagery.

The layer only includes actual Google Street View and does not include user-submitted Google Views or Business Views.

The locations include a number of places we have looked at before that we found very difficult to get to from Google Earth and at the time recommended the Google Maps version of Street View instead. These locations include:

The new layer makes it much easier to find those locations and to enter Street View, but navigation is still very difficult. There are often no street lines or other markers indicating which directions you can navigate. Overall, the Street View interface within Google Earth is not as good as the Google Maps version, but moving on a larger scale between locations with Street View is now easier in Google Earth and a superior experience to Google Maps. Probably the best solution is to find interesting Street View in Google Earth and then switch to Google Maps to view it using the ‘View in Google Maps’ button on the tool bar.

Sea Lions, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.