U.S. Wildfires map showing the perimeter of the fire near Colorado Springs. View larger map.
Use the checkboxes along the right-hand panel to turn on and off the layers of information, and the “Share” button at the top of the map to grab the URL or embed code. Note that both the URL and the embed code will automatically restore your current view of the map, including the set of layers that you have turned on.
New satellite imagery captured by DigitalGlobe on Thursday. View larger map.
You can also view the updated imagery in Google Earth to better understand the situation on the ground and its effects on these communities — just download this KML file. It includes both the optical and near-infrared images of the Waldo Canyon Fire, taken Thursday June 28.
Stay tuned for more map updates as we identify additional information for the wildfires. If you have data that you’d like to see included on the Google Crisis Map, contact us using this form and we’ll take a look.
Posted by Pete Giencke, Google Crisis Response Team
Open a list of tour thumbnails by swiping the tab located at the bottom of the Google Earth for mobile screen
Thumbnails of available pre-created tours will dynamically update with interesting locations in your current view. Simply click the thumbnail image to start the tour and begin your online adventure of discovering new and exciting places around the world.
Tour of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, California
Where available, the tours include 3D models for the most realistic experience possible. Information from Wikipedia also provides more information on famous sites, so you can learn more about the places that interest you as your virtually fly over them. The tour guide also includes user-contributed Picasa and Panoramio photos as thumbnails for a preview of the featured location.
Creating this comprehensive 3D experience is possible due to advanced image processing. Using 45-degree aerial imagery, we're able to automatically recreate entire metropolitan areas in 3D. This means every building (not just the famous landmarks), the terrain, and any surrounding landscape of trees are included to provide a much more accurate and realistic experience.
Get started today by taking a virtual flight over one of our initial 3D imagery cities: Boulder, Boston, Santa Cruz, San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Antonio, Charlotte, Tucson, Lawrence, Portland, Tampa, Rome or the San Francisco Bay Area (including the Peninsula and East Bay). We’ll continue to release new 3D imagery for places around the world over the coming months; by the end of the year, we aim to have new 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people.
Tour Guide
Not sure where to begin? Let the new tour guide help show you the way. We’ve put together short tours of thousands of famous places and historical sites across the globe so it’s easier than ever to discover amazing places. Just pull up the tab at the bottom of the screen to open the tour guide. Each image highlights a tours or place of interest in the area you are looking. Click on an item and you will be flown there. As you fly in and around the sites, snippets from Wikipedia provide additional information about the location. It’s like having a local expert right beside you!
Tour guide showing top destinations around Los Angeles.
We hope this more accurate, comprehensive and realistic 3D representation of the Earth brings out the inner explorer in you. Whether you are visiting familiar grounds or venturing out into the world, Google Earth is there to show you the way.
Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth
Let’s say you find yourself traveling to London this summer. Before you head off on your trip, simply find the area that you’ll be visiting. Then select “Make available offline” from the menu and verify the area that you would like to save.
Below the map, you’ll see we estimate the file size for you, so you know how much space it will take on your device. Once you confirm your selection the map will immediately start downloading.
Save an area and go to My Places to see all your offline maps
If you have GPS enabled on the device, the blue dot will still work without a data connection so you know where you are, and if your device has a compass you can orient yourself without 3G or WiFi connectivity.
So whether you’re traveling internationally or underground, we hope offline maps will help you get around.
Today we’re also releasing a smoother and faster Compass Mode for Street View within Google Maps for Android. It’s the next best thing to being there, because your device becomes a window into a 360-degree, panoramic view of the outdoor or interior location through Business Photos. To experience the improved qualities of this feature you need a device with Google Maps for Android, Android 3.0 or higher and a gyroscope sensor plus version 1.8.1 of Street View on Google Maps.
See inside District wine bar in San Francisco
To learn more about Google Maps for Android features, start here.
Posted by Jiabei Lei, Software Engineer, Google Maps Mobile
According to partner Aliança da Terra, it is possible for Brazil's farmers to help feed the world, contribute to economic development, and find a balance with our global human and environmental needs. They’ve created a Registry of Socio-Environmental Responsibility for Brazilian producers of soy, cattle, corn and other crops who want to practice their trade in a way that complies with Brazilian law and doesn’t degrade their land for future farming activities. They launched their new website at the side event, featuring maps of the 400+ properties in the Registry as well as their fire brigades to stop the spread of fire in the Amazon. These maps were created with Google Maps Engine, and Aliança da Terra was one of the early grantees of the Google Maps Engine Grants program.
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”
Imagine you are a call center operator at an electric utility company. A call comes in reporting a downed powerline in one of the northern suburbs of your city, and an entire neighborhood is without power. You need to quickly dispatch one of your line repairers to the site, which is almost an hour away. To save time and get the power back up quickly, you want to know which line repairers are already in the area and send them the relevant information about the job.
That’s where Google Maps Coordinate comes in, a new tool designed to improve communication between businesses and their employees in the field. As the number of mobile employees continues to grow, so does the need for a location sharing solution that works in real-time. Research firm IDC estimates that there will be over 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015 (37.2% of the total workforce)*. Google Maps Coordinate combines the power of Google’s mapping technologies with modern smartphones to help organizations assign jobs and deploy staff more efficiently.
When a business signs up for Google Maps Coordinate, they get access to the Google Maps Coordinate web and mobile apps.
Employees in the field download the mobile app to their phone and then can:
Share real-time location. Google Maps Coordinate is built on Google’s mapping and geolocation infrastructure so the app will send an accurate location, even if you’re indoors (Google Maps Coordinate integrates with Google Indoor Maps).
Record data. Mobile teams often need to collect information while out in the field. Google Maps Coordinate allows the admin to customize the fields that the mobile team needs to capture and collect – from measurements to client contact details – directly in the app.
Meanwhile, a designated dispatcher back in the office can:
Create teams. Add team members to a Google Maps Coordinate team and see their locations in the Google Maps Coordinate web and mobile app. For example, our electric utility company might create a special team for home electricians and another for line repairers.
Manage jobs. Easily create jobs, precisely locate the job, assign the job to the nearest team member and notify them instantly. The next time there is a downed powerline, the operator at the utility company will have no problem identifying the closest team member and assigning them to investigate the issue.
View past jobs and locations. Get the hard data needed to make strong business decisions. With Google Maps Coordinate, businesses can easily visualize the locations of all their jobs and teams, including current and past jobs. Businesses can assess where they should be assigning or hiring more workers and how to optimally place their teams.
Any business can sign up for Google Maps Coordinate. Google Maps Coordinate is built to work seamlessly with the entire Google Enterprise Maps and Earth experience, and it comes with an API that can integrate with any of your existing systems.
Contact our sales team or a Google Enterprise Maps and Earth reseller if you’re interested in signing up for Google Maps Coordinate. Share your Google Maps Coordinate use cases and feedback on our Enterprise G+ page.
*IDC, Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2011-2015 Forecast, Doc #232073, December 2011
The traffic data allows you to see current traffic conditions, and also gives you estimated travel times.
Aside from these new additions, we have also improved and expanded our coverage to more roads in 19 countries and regions, where traffic data is already available; the countries include: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the UK.
A quick glance at our traffic coverage around the globe
For our new users, you can check traffic conditions by visiting maps.google.com and clicking on the traffic layer in the widget on the upper right-hand side of the map. This useful traffic information is also available on Google Maps for Mobile devices and Google Maps Navigation.
If the roads you are traveling do not yet show traffic information, don’t despair. You can help your fellow drivers and improve traffic data by using Google Navigation or Google Maps for Mobile while traveling.
We hope the traffic feature in Google Maps will help more users around the globe to save time and patience by planning their trips accordingly.
Posted by Matthias Ernst, Software Engineer, Google Maps
The text reads: “Jenipapo fruit is produced by the jenipapo tree, which reaches twenty feet high. From the meaty part of the green fruit, an ink is extracted with which human skin can be painted. This makes the fruit very important for the Surui, because the art of painting is always included in everything that they do, especially in celebrations and rituals. The art of painting is one of the things most valued by Paiter. Each occasion calls for a different type of painting.”
Here’s a rich storytelling tour of the Surui Cultural Map, narrated by Chief Almir and the Surui youth who were the star mapmakers:
As Chief Almir says at the conclusion of the Surui people’s Google Earth tour:
Without the forest, our entire culture would disappear. And without our culture, the forest would have disappeared a long time ago. It’s important to live in a sustainable way and to strengthen those whose livelihoods directly depend on a healthy ecosystem. We have a 50-year sustainability plan, which includes solutions for our territory. An example is the Surui Carbon Project, which uses technology to monitor the carbon stock of forest and trade it in the market for carbon credits. Our hope is that we can come together virtually and in person, and that we can find and implement solutions together.
It’s been a great honor for us to work with the Surui people and to experience their world view, especially to see how they blend their traditional knowledge and culture with modern technology. We’ve learned from Chief Almir that partnerships, consensus and collaboration are central; in that spirit, we’d like to thank our partners on this project: ECAM, Kanindé and Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol, who has documented the life of the Surui people for more than twenty years.
You can watch a video of the tour or download it in English or Portuguese. To learn more about the Surui tribe, known as “Paiter Surui,” please visit www.paiter.org.
Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine
This month, heads of state, NGOs, scientists and business leaders from around the world will meet to discuss how best to reduce poverty, advance social equity and better protect the environment at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20.
We’ll be posting updates on the Google Green Blog from the conference throughout the week, but we thought we’d offer a quick preview of how we’ll be participating:
Wednesday, June 13th - Friday, June 22nd: We invite all conference attendees to visit us at our booth in the Rio State Government Pavilion at Athletes’ Park. You’ll be able to tour the Earth and beyond in our Liquid Galaxy, an immersive Google Earth experience, and explore some of the work our partners have created using Google tools.
Friday, June 15th: Ronaldo Barreto, Strategic Partner Manager for Latin America, will participate in Megacities Forum 2012, at a roundtable on “Future Cities and the Use of New Transport Technologies.” Ronaldo will show how tools such as Google Maps, Google Transit and Google Street View are being used to modernize Rio de Janeiro’s transportation infrastructure.
Friday, June 15th: Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager for Google Earth Engine and Google Earth Outreach, will speak at “No Roads to a Green Economy: Mapping Earth´s roadless areas and their services,” a discussion at the European Union Pavilion about the need to promote roadless areas as a means to conserve biodiversity and secure the rights of indigenous people.
Saturday, June 16th: Rebecca Moore will be joining Chief Almir Surui at the Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum to share the latest news regarding our ongoing partnership with the Surui tribe.
Sunday, June 17th: We’ll be holding an SD-Learning event, “From the Ground to the Cloud: New Tools for Sustainable Development,” which will be introduced by Brazilian Senator Eduardo Braga and will feature a presentation from Imazon on their work to create a deforestation monitoring system for Brazil, powered by Google Earth Engine. (Registration has closed for this event.)
Monday, June 18th: All visitors to Rio+20 are welcome to join our Side Event, "Tools for Data Collection and Mapping: the Ground to the Cloud Story" at the Arena de Barra. We’ll be hearing from a number of partners about they work they’re doing with Google tools. Among others, the Jane Goodall Institute and Woods Hole Research Center will share their work estimating forest biomass over Tanzania with Google Earth Engine, and Aliança da Terra will talk about how their use of Open Data Kit and Google Maps Engine has transformed their operations.
Tuesday, June 19th: we’ll be at the U.S. Government Pavilion to participate in panel discussions and demonstrations of our work with the Governor’s Forest and Climate Taskforce.
These are only a few examples of the fascinating ways technology can help address some of our world’s most pressing challenges. Stay tuned for updates throughout the conference about the news our partners are sharing, and if you have any thoughts about how technology can help save the world -- or at least help us all be more environmentally responsible and support a sustainable future, let us know at #googleatrio20.
Posted by Rick Needham, Director, Energy & Sustainability
Luc Vincent, engineering director, taking the Street View Trekker for a trial run in Tahoe
Accuracy
The next attribute map makers obsess over is accuracy. We still have a way to go because the world is constantly changing—with new houses, cities and parks appearing all the time—it’s a never ending job. But by cross-checking the data we have, we can significantly improve the accuracy of our maps. Turns out our users are as passionate about the quality of Google Maps as we are, and they give us great feedback on where we can do better. We make thousands of edits a day based on user feedback through our Report a Problem tool and via Map Maker, which we launched in 2008. Today we’re announcing the expansion of Map Maker to South Africa and Egypt, and to 10 more countries in the next few weeks: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.
Usability
The final element of the perfect map is usability. It’s hard to remember what digital maps were like before Google Maps went live in 2005, and the huge technological breakthroughs that transformed clicking on arrows and waiting, to simply dragging a map with a mouse and watching it render smoothly and quickly. Plus, we added one single search box. Today we have thousands of data sources that feed into our maps making them a rich and interactive experience on any device—from driving directions to transit and indoor maps to restaurant reviews.
People have been asking for the ability to use our maps offline on their mobile phones. So today we’re announcing that offline Google Maps for Android are coming in the next few weeks. Users will be able to take maps offline from more than 100 countries. This means that the next time you are on the subway, or don’t have a data connection, you can still use our maps.
The next dimension
An important next step in improving all of these areas—comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of our maps—is the ability to model the world in 3D. Since 2006, we’ve had textured 3D buildings in Google Earth, and today we are excited to announce that we will begin adding 3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices. This is possible thanks to a combination of our new imagery rendering techniques and computer vision that let us automatically create 3D cityscapes, complete with buildings, terrain and even landscaping, from 45-degree aerial imagery. By the end of the year we aim to have 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people.
I have been working on mapping technology most of my life. We’ve made more progress, more quickly as an industry than I ever imagined possible. And we expect innovation to speed-up even more over the next few years. While we may never create the perfect map … we’re going to get much, much closer than we are today.
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Maps
