14 DAY TRIAL // One of Google's biggest advantages is its massive amounts of data and the computing power at its disposal. It enables Google teams to quickly build and scale projects without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Google is now donating some of its computing power to help analyze and understand all manner of mapping data which could lead to a better understanding of our environment and the challenges facing it.
"Today, we launched a new Google Labs product called Google Earth Engine at the International Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico," Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager for Google Earth Engine, announced.
"Google Earth Engine is a new technology platform that puts an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data—current and historical—online for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment," she explained.
"The platform will enable scientists to use our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google 'cloud' —to analyze this imagery," she added.
Much of the data Google is surfacing has been available for quite some time, but the technical difficulties in aggregating it and analyzing it in any meaningful way meant that much of it has been sitting unused.
Google Earth Engine aims to change that. The tool comes with data from Landsat covering 25-year's worth of map data for most of the developing world. Google says that this will soon cover the entire globe.
The great advantage for scientists and environmental organizations is that Google will be supplying the CPU power needed to analyze vast amounts of data. Google says it will be donating 10 million CPU hours a year for the next two years to the project.
There are a number of projects and organizations that could benefit from the data and the tools. Environmental organizations can monitor deforestation, for example, and, in the case of a disaster, it can provide accurate map data for relief efforts.