Maps of the Los Angeles wildfires

Since earlier this week, wildfires driven by strong winds have been destroying land and livelihood across Southern California. Thousands of acres of land have been under threat as firefighters battle against tough conditions and try to bring about containment of the fires.

Several groups have taken the initiative to create their own maps and KML files which show the latest information and provide useful information for affected citizens. The current suite of Earth and Maps visualizations includes:

• The Los Angeles Times has created this My Map updating us on the latest around San Fernando.
• The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services has annotated their own maps in conjunction with the Los Angeles Fire Department showing both the Marek and Sesnon fires.
• Incident Information System created a map, incident reports and fire boundary KML files to download; for example, a KML determining the fire extent.

Whether you're in an impacted (or potentially impacted) area or would like to stay on top of the news, hopefully the maps created by these groups will be of use.

Posted by Phil Verney, Google Earth Community Development

Where in the world is... (Answers)

As usual, great work! I'm always impressed that many blogs out there answer all the questions and manage to find many of the updates I didn't even reference.

Here are the answers to the quiz, and below is a more complete listing of areas updated.

1)  Often referred to as "The Crown of Polish Mountains," this is the highest point in the country.
- The highest point in the country, Sněžka, at 1,602 m (5,262 ft)

2)  A university named after an American revolutionary, patriot, and founding father -- and home to a surprise Final Four team.  
- George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia

3)  In 1405, the French conqueror Jean de Bethencourt took the island and gave his name to the former capital,  Betancuria, on the west coast (Puerto Rosario took over the mantle as island capital in 1835). The name of the island itself is believed to have come from Bethencourt's exclamation "Que forte aventure!" ("What a grand adventure"). A less romantic explanation is that the name simply means "strong wind".
- Canary Islands - Fuerteventura and Tenerife

4)  This city, located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, is home to Peninsula College and is the birthplace of football hall of famer John Elway.
- Port Angeles, Washington

5)   Approximately 80 percent of this state's population lives along the Wasatch Front.
- Utah

6)   The Industrial Museum is housed in a former silk mill in this city (the start of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site).
- Derbyshire, England

7)   Interested in movies? Some scenes in the 1999 thriller Double Jeopardy starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones were filmed here, notably at the historic courthouse.
- Revelstoke, British Columbia

8)  This city lies on the Arno River and has been called the "Athens of the Middle Ages".
- Firenze (Florence), Italy

9) A tale of three states:

-This state has the highest plunge waterfalls in the country.

Maharastra, India

-One of the greatest batsmen in the world, or the Master Blaster hails from this state. 

Karnataka, India

-The "Mosque of the four minarets is an important monument in this state.

Andhra Pradesh, India

Here is the complete list of updated imagery:

Americas: 
- USA: Port Angeles (WA), Wasilla (AK), Lincoln City (OR), Utah (UT), Fairfax County (VA), Spotsylvania County (VA)
- Mexico: San Luis Potosi and Culican.
- Canada: Revelstoke (BC)

Europe, Middle East, & Africa: 
- England: Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire and Devon
- Scotland: Aberdeen
- Spain: Menorca, Fuerteventura and Tenerife (part of Canary Islands) 
- Italy: Florence, Urbina, Capri, Verona, Elba
- Czech Republic: Entire country in high resolution

New 2.5m base imagery for parts of: Mexico, India, Romania, and Australia.

Posted by Nagaraj K, GIS Specialist

Promenez-vous sur les Champs Elysees...

Having worked on Street View since the early days of the project, it gives me great pleasure to return to Paris this week for the launch of more Street View coverage in my home country.

Earlier this year we launched our first Street View coverage in Europe with the release of the 21 stages of the Tour De France route.  This was very popular with our French Google Maps users and cycling enthusiasts all around the world, so I am now especially excited that we've added coverage for 6 major cities in France: Paris, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Marseille and Nice.
 
France is the first country in Europe to benefit from Street View imagery and I'm delighted that many of my favorite places are included in the new coverage, including the street where I grew up, which you can see below. If I ever feel mal du pays (homesick), I can look these places up on Street View now!

View Larger Map

We decided to add coverage for large cities in order to make the product as useful as possible for our French Maps users.  It's also great for people all around the world to catch a glimpse of France in order to plan holidays, to learn about a new place, or to have a chance to see many of the beautiful sites for themselves.

Using Street View, you can now walk down the Champs Elysees, explore the old port of Marseille, journey along La Promenade des Anglais in Nice or take a tour around La Croix Rousse in Lyon. Here's a brief tour of some of my favorite images so far:

Toulouse:

View Larger Map

Paris:

View Larger Map

Lyon:

View Larger Map

Because there are so many, here's a slideshow with even more amazing images:

We look forward to adding Street View coverage for more cities and countries in Europe, and I look forward to my trip down memory lane.

Posted by Luc Vincent, Engineering Director, Street View

Campaigning across Canada

There have been many great My Maps created for the upcoming US elections, which we're featuring in the Google Maps Elections Gallery. There have also been great maps put together for today's elections in Canada. The Globe and Mail, a national newspaper in Canada, has put together a series of My Maps that track the campaigns of candidates as they travel across the country. The latest map chronicles the candidates on election day. 

Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team

Where in the world is ...

This month we've published a significant amount of new or updated high resolution satellite imagery for Google Earth. So if you think it is going to be easy to find the new imagery, stop and think again. You are going to have to work a little. We have put together a list of clues about where to find some of our new imagery. Here is one to get you off and running on your Google Earth tour: I would encourage all to go and explore the earth -- you never know what you might see.

1) Often referred to as "The Crown of Polish Mountains," this is the highest point in the country.




2) A university named after an American revolutionary, patriot, and founding father -- and home to a surprise Final Four team.

3) In 1405, the French conqueror Jean de Bethencourt took the island and gave his name to the former capital, Betancuria, on the west coast (Puerto Rosario took over the mantle as island capital in 1835). The name of the island itself is believed to have come from Bethencourt's exclamation "Que forte aventure!" ("What a grand adventure!") A less romantic explanation is that the name simply means "strong wind."

4) This city, located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, is home to Peninsula College and is the birthplace of football hall of famer John Elway.


The Olympic Mountains in winter, as seen from the east. The Brothers is the large double peak on the left, and Mount Constance is on the right.

5) Approximately 80 percent of this state's population lives along the Wasatch Front.

6) The Industrial Museum is housed in a former Silk Mill in this city (the start of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site).

7) Interested in movies? Some scenes in the 1999 thriller Double Jeopardy starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones were filmed here, notably at the historic courthouse.

8) This city lies on the Arno River and has been called the "Athens of the Middle Ages."

9) A tale of three states:

• This state has the highest plunge waterfalls in the country
• One of the greatest batsmen in the world, or the Master Blaster hails from this state
• The "Mosque of the four minarets is an important monument in this state.

Jog Falls, The Taj and Charminar


Posted by Nagaraj K, GIS Specialist

Transliteration for Japan

I'll never forget the first time that I'd traveled to Japan, when I'd nearly missed a train because I couldn't make heads or tails of the route markers that displayed city names in kanji, the Chinese-based Japanese character set. Though I'd studied katakana (alphabet for foreign words) and hiragana (alphabet for native words), kanji was entirely different. For starters, they aren't phonetic like the other two but more conceptual (e.g. ideograms or pictograms). What's more, there are thousands of them. Last count was in the tens of thousands. The problem for me, of course, was that geographic names are written in kanji.

Fast forward to this past summer when I returned to Japan and tried to plan my route to the Tokyo Google office using Google Maps. Again, I couldn't make sense of the subway station names. Well, this time I could do something about it. This week we will be releasing English labels of city names, prefectures, districts and transit station names in Japan. We have used a combination of transliteration (local pronunciation into English alphabet) and translation so that "Shibuya Eki" would read as "Shibuya Station", for example. We thought it would be more helpful to transliterate the name but let users know the difference between a city or a station. We've even used macrons so "Tokyo" reads as "Tōkyō" to help with pronunciation.

As it turns out, I wasn't the only one having problems reading kanji. Users have been asking for this for a long time. Back in February, the Maps team got the ball rolling with major city names and now, we're working towards adding more English labels. In the future, you can look forward to additional coverage with street names and other points of interest.

before

after

Posted by Linne Ha, International Program Manager

Don't forget: Academic Developers Conference

A reminder to all of you interested in cutting edge applications for Google Earth and Google Maps: Google is co-sponsoring a conference with the University of Michigan on October 22nd and 23rd. Researchers, entrepreneurs, faculty, and students from all over the country will be attending to discuss new projects, learn about data visualization techniques, and get first-hand access to Google Earth engineers.

Focus groups include:

Astronomy Planetary science Public policy Demographics

Medical disease tracking Disaster response Archeology Climate change

Geosciences Science Education Urban Planning Weather

Speakers and presenters include:

• Tim Killeen, Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation
  
• Dan Adkins, former Director of the National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure
• Sean Askay, Google Earth Outreach Evangelist
• Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager
• Mano Marks, Google Geo Developer Advocate
• Noel Gorelick, Google Sky Tech Lead
  

Registration is open until October 17th so make sure you register soon.  To register and find out additional details about the event, including travel information and agenda, go to GoogleEarthConference.engin.umich.edu.

Posted by Ryan Falor, Systems Engineer