SUSANNAH RAUB: I'm glad somebody
has asked this question.
RETO MEIER: This is where the magic happens.
JENNY MURPHY:This is primarily a question and answer show, so
if any of you out there would like to ask questions.
MANO MARKS: Hi, welcome to our latest Maps
Developer live event.
This week we are talking with Raleigh Seamster from the
Google Earth Outreach team.
I'm Mano Marks, sorry.
This is Raleigh right here.
And we apologize for getting a little bit of a late start.
Raleigh is from, as I mentioned, the Google Earth
Outreach team.
And she just organized a really amazing event last week
called Geo for Good.
So we asked her to come in this week to talk to us about
what happened.
So Raleigh, can you talk a little bit about what Google
Earth Outreach is, and what the Geo for Good event was?
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: Sure, so Google Earth Outreach is a
program which helps nonprofits and public benefit
organizations use Google Maps in order to visualize their
cause and message to the world.
And as part of the program we offer a lot
of different things.
We offer software grants to nonprofits.
We offer trainings, both online and in person, as well
as many other resources on our website.
And so what we were doing last week was holding a three-day
workshop that we called the Geo for Good user summit.
Now since we launched in 2006, we've held many, many
different trainings all over the world of different types.
This summit was the first of its kind.
It was a special event.
And the purpose of this summit--
usually we're working with groups that may not be as
familiar with Google's mapping tools.
But this time around we were bringing our non-profits we
know, different hall of famer non-profits that have already
produced amazing work in Google Earth and Maps, as well
as some new ones.
And we're bringing them here to Google headquarters in
Mountain View to refresh them in all the amazing
developments in these products that have happened over the
last couple of years, as well as some completely new tools
like Google Maps Engine and Google Earth Engine.
So the basic structure of the summit was to have hands-on
sessions in all of these different tools, as well as
break out sessions, giving participants the opportunity
to explore and do deeper dives on topics like KML
coding and Maps API.
MANO MARKS: Cool.
So we have actually here a few demos that Raleigh has
identified from participants in the summit.
So we just want to go through a few of these.
This first one here-- if we can put that up--
is from Living Oceans.
And why don't you tell us a little bit about what the
purpose of the site is.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: Yeah, sure, so Living Oceans Society their
mission is to protect British Columbia specific coastline.
And so they work a lot on topics of marine planning and
conservation.
And they had all of these amazing maps on paper.
And so they've been doing a lot with Google tools in order
to put these maps online so both stakeholders and the
public can explore.
And this map in particular is an example of how they've used
Google Maps Engine in order to bring in different map layers
onto the same map.
It has this nice widget that lets you turn layers off and
on and understand what they mean.
And then you can click on the individual points to explore
more information.
It's very interactive.
And they have this embedded right on their website.
MANO MARKS: So here you can see it's
got interesting layers.
Kayak routes, ferry routes, incidents where there were
vessels, protected areas, and you can turn those on and off.
And you see they display here.
So this is using the Maps API, and it's using Fusion Table
Layers to render a number of these different data layers.
And you can see how you can just turn those on and off.
Let's take a look at I Love Mountains.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: So this is another example of a great
organization we've been working with since the
beginning of our program.
Appalachian Voices is a nonprofit based in Appalachia
that works to raise public awareness about coal mining's
impact on the region.
They've done a number of different projects over the
years and this one in particular is using Maps API
to display data layers.
So they're pulling in from various national data sets
about the impacts of coal mining on
health in the region.
So what you see right now, for example, is data on life
expectancy changed by county in Appalachia.
And if you can see it, there's green markings where coal
mining is happening.
And then the red indicates the areas in which the life
expectancy has lowered by a great percentage.
And so you can really overlay these two data sets using Maps
API and see how the data correlates.
MANO MARKS: Right, so they're using I believe KML layers to
render the different regions where the [INAUDIBLE]
maps basically.
The individual areas where you see differences in life
expectancy.
You see where red is-- you actually see this decrease a
half a year to a year.
And dark red, such as in this region, of more than a year in
the last decade.
So in the last decade, people living in these areas have
lost basically a year of expectancy from their life.
And they've got other data ranges here.
So you've got overall well being, birth defect indexes,
and a whole bunch of other stuff.
And you can see overall well being for a pretty big swath
of this area has just dramatically dropped.
And I just really like this as a nice, very clean, easy to
use and understand way to tell the story about mountain
[INAUDIBLE].
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: If you see above,
there's a get embed code.
And they do a great job of making their maps shareable
across the web.
MANO MARKS: Right, so you can have a share embed code here
and it's just an iframe.
It's like putting a video in your blog or putting a map
right in your blog.
Yeah, a really nice way to pull that all together.
Let's take a look at Eyes On The Forest here.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: Sure, this is a project
from the last year.
And what's interesting about this is the WWF and an
Indonesian nonprofit called Eyes On The Forest--
MANO MARKS: WWF is--
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: World Wildlife Fund.
Thank you.
And basically what they're doing is they're working to
protect wildlife in Sumatra.
There's a lot of really unique animal species there such as
the Sumatran tiger, rhinos, and elephants.
And the palm oil production and pulp paper industry on the
island are very quickly deforesting and degrading the
natural habitats that these animals live in.
And they were looking for a way to really communicate this
message to CEOs of companies that buy the paper and
buy the palm oil.
And show the impact that this is having on the island.
So what they did is they brought all of their data sets
about wildlife habitat ranges, carbon stocks, forest ranges,
protected areas, and stored it in Google Maps Engine.
And then they're using Google Maps API as the front end, the
interface, through which the public can
explore these data layers.
And it's quite--
Mano's going to show you in a minute-- but it's quite
interesting, because there's a pull-out menu that when you
hover over a certain data set it tells you more
about that data set.
So it's really geared towards explaining to the public these
complicated data sets.
MANO MARKS: Right, so as you can see here from the map if I
hover over, say the Sumatran rhinoceros, it tells me a lot
about what's going on there.
And a lot about the rhinos and how they are critically
endangered.
And you can also select the different wildlife ranges.
You can see in 2007 and then the 1980s.
And this follows a fairly similar pattern we saw on a
number of these different sites, where you have this
left nav where you pull up individual data layers.
Because there's so much data you want to be able to give
the user and interactivity that allows them to select
what they're viewing and what they're not.
And I particularly like that they're using Maps Engine with
the Google Maps API, because that allows them to display
just really large, large amounts of data.
Now Google Maps Engine is--
for those of you who don't know--
it's a new serving technology from Google.
We released it last year.
And it's basically storing all your GIS data and then serving
it out over Google's infrastructure.
And it allows people to use both the Maps API but also to
use their native data format.
So you can upload shape files or KML files or whatever GIS
data formats that you have--
those vector and raster data--
upload them to Maps Engine and then we handle all the serving
out of that data.
And you can obviously combine it with our data as well.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: And the cool thing to note about Google
Maps Engine is that eligible non-profits can apply for a
grant of Google Maps Engine through the Google Earth
Outreach program.
We'll share with you some links as to how you find out
more information about that.
MANO MARKS: We'll put links in the description of the video
once it's posted.
Let's take a look at this Living Oceans site here.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: So again, Living Ocean Society they're
working to communicate different marine planning
issues to the public.
And this site is an example of using the Google Earth plug-in
API in order to share different data
layers on the map.
So they have that left hand nav that you can turn on and
off layers.
But the cool thing is that since they're using the Earth
API, you can tilt and rotate and explore in the 3D view.
MANO MARKS: Right, and so you can see here turning on and
off layers within the Earth API.
And you just get this real nice sense of the ocean.
I'd like to see them put something under the ocean,
because you can actually go under the ocean with the Earth
API and see things on the ocean floor.
I don't think we have a lot of good terrain data down there
in this particular region.
Yeah, makes for a very nice smooth experience and allows
you to display a lot of data directly in the browser.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: We find that using Google Earth resonates
especially with environmental organizations that are working
with issues dealing with the land and the landscape.
And they love being able to use Google Earth's rich
terrain and 3D imagery in order to communicate those
issues to the public.
MANO MARKS: Right, and then have that on the plug in right
on their website allows them to have a nice smooth 3D
experience.
And I wanted to show one map that I show.
This is actually just a sample that I developed.
There is an organization called Save the Elephants, and
they produce a GP extract of one particular elephant over a
year period in this park within Kenya.
And you can see on here that all I did was I took the GPX
track and loaded it into the browser.
And then just parsed it as XML.
And using our new heat map and symbols capabilities that we
put into the Google Maps API this summer.
So the heat map is a layer and the symbols are symbols on
pulley lines in this case but also on markers.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit here.
You can see I actually put a little symbol of an elephant
on the line, and I'm animating it as it's
moving around the line.
So you can see the little elephant moving there.
And basically what we do is we allow you to do custom symbols
on maps using SVG paths.
So we then parse those SVG paths, render them into
canvas, and overlay them on top of the map.
And here I'm just changing the position every few seconds.
I'm changing the position of the symbol along the line.
Just a very small incremental percentage.
But I can turn that on and off.
I can interact basically with this dynamically.
I can change the color, because this is all happening
in the browser.
It happens very quickly.
It's all rendered in the browser.
I can turn on and off the heat map as well.
And in this case, you can see I also used arrows on the
lines between the waypoints.
So I just added a symbol, a repeating symbol,
that repeats every--
I think it was 100 pixels on the line.
You can see an arrow that basically tells you the
direction that that elephant was going at that particular
time between different waypoints.
That then turned into a breakout session where that
was mostly what I talked about during that session.
Any last minute thoughts Raleigh?
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: I guess just if you're interested to know
more about what non-profits are doing with Google Maps,
Google Maps API, Google Earth, head to our website
earth.google.com/outreach.
We have tons of case studies and examples there.
We have a section where you can read about
our software grants.
So if you are at a nonprofit, or are working with a
nonprofit, you can encourage them to apply
for a grant if needed.
We also have a developer marketplace, where developers
that like working with nonprofits and are looking for
work with nonprofits can list themselves in a marketplace.
And we also have a page of training resources.
So if you're a developer working with nonprofits, and
you want to give them some basic training on how to use
these tools, we have materials that can help you do that.
MANO MARKS: Great, well thanks for coming in and talking to
us today Raleigh.
And we'll post links to a lot of these samples and to the
Earth Outreach resources in the video and
on our Google+ page.
Thanks everybody for watching.
RALEIGH SEAMSTER: Thank you.