UK Flood Gets Mapped By Google

Following the recent flood from UK, the local Internet users found a simple way to keep the residents of the country up to date with the latest weather information: a Google Maps mashup that shows every location to be hit by water. As usual, the map is created with the recently released My Maps implemented into the Google Maps web-based service that allows users to create a simple map in a matter of seconds. According to Ed Parsons who is hired as a geospatial technologist at Google according to Guardian Unlimited, the map is updated every hour so it seems like the information is really up to date with the reality.

"A Great example of community mapping and the immediacy of tools like the My Maps feature of Google Maps is this map by Oliver Williams who is collating images, videos and reports relating to the current river floods in England. When I looked these maps was less than a hour old! Not only is this a potentially powerful way of communicating up-to-date information quickly, it is also great at telling the human story of such events," Ed Parsons wrote today.

This is another proof that Google Maps rises in popularity and this is only good news because the communities of users from every corner of the world are joining forces to build new interesting projects useful for many of us.

In the recent time, Google Maps received a lot of presents from its parent Google. For example, the Street View function introduced some time ago created quite a buzz around the web-based mapping tool as several consumers raised privacy concerns and sustained the solution shows way too many details even from their houses. However, Google defended itself by sustaining it shows only the information accessible straight from the street.