The Google Earth Engine
Global-scale analysis of Earth
observation data
Dave Thau
thau@google.com
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Who are we?
- Technology-Driven Philanthropy.
Goal: Use Google's strengths in information and
technology to address global challenges.
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Global Challenges
Google’s Strengths
Climate change
Pandemic disease
Poverty
Data management, processing,
Storage, indexing & delivery.
Making things simple, at scale.
Google Flu Trends
Google Power Meter
RE<C and RechargeIT
Google Flu Trends uses
aggregated Google search
data to estimate flu activity
in near real-time in 20
countries.
Google PowerMeter is a
home energy monitoring
tool that gives you the
information you need to
use less electricity and
save money.
Developing utility scale
renewable energy
cheaper than coal (RE<C) and
accelerating the commercialization
of plug-in vehicles (RechargeIT)
Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Motivation
Rondonia, Brazil
June 1975
Rondonia, Brazil
July 1989
UNEP: "Atlas of our Changing Environment"
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Rondonia, Brazil
September 2001
Challenges and Goals
Access to Data
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Cost, availability & licensing of petabytes
Raw data requires preprocessing
Why should each user have to solve this on their own?
Access to Software, Algorithms, and Hardware
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What algorithms are available and where to find them?
I don’t have a cluster, what do I do?
Non-technical Challenges
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Open, transparent, verifiable
Privacy and sovereignty concerns
Non-Goals
• Doing global monitoring ourselves
• Scientific algorithm research
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
The Plan
Developing a platform for processing at scale
• Inherently parallel system
• Instant visualization
• Promote transparency, reproducibility, reuse
Getting expertise from the experts
• Avoid reinventing the (scientific) wheel
• Partner with academic institutions, NGOs, indigenous people…
Providing a place to publish (or not)
• Let users curate their own datasets and algorithms
• Help others to find them
• Or keep everything private
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Demo
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Details
Very fast computation of scientific map products
• Using arbitrary (user-supplied) algorithms
With some nice features
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APIs for algorithm development and Web front ends
Access control, versioning, provenance
Online and Desktop versions (open source desktop version)
TIFF / KML / Fusion Tables / Google Maps
On a lot of data
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Stored in their native projection
Every available Landsat scene
Every MODIS scene
Commercial datasets with cost pass-thru
User supplied data
Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Android phones+OpenDataKit Training: Tanzania Village Forest Monitors,
TZ Forestry and Beekeeping Division, Jane Goodall Institute, Nov 2009
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Each point: GPS-tagged photo, tree info, plot info, more….
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
…more data collected for each in-situ sample point
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Dataset from
Brian
Heidorn
Image from
Animal
Biodiversity
Web
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Biodiversity and Conservation
Niche Modeling
River health
Upper Mississippi
From USGS
Your Ideas
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Prediction for
Triatoma barberi
Peterson, et al. 2002
Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010
Thank you
To sign up for our trusted tester list:
earthengine-beta@google.com
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Google Earth Engine - thau@google.com - TWDG – September 28, 2010