Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
replacement of New Orleans imagery with coverage dating from before 2005's Hurricane
Katrina, noting that:
To use older, pre-Katrina imagery when more recent images are available without
some explanation as to why appears to be fundamentally dishonest . . . [and] ap-
pears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing
history. (www.topix.net/us-house/brad-miller/2007/03/subcommittee-criticizes-
google-images)
Spatial resolution also varies, and while one can appreciate why areas of Iraq and
Darfur should be portrayed at sub-metre resolution, given the current worldwide inter-
est in those areas, it is harder to understand why imagery for some areas of England is no
better than 30 m and partially obscured by cloud, while some rural areas of Peru are visible
at1m.
The view of the world available from Google Earth is essentially that from above. This is also
the view of traditional cartography, of course, and has been the subject of extensive critique
(see, for example, the feminist critique of Kwan, 2002). Google Earth's has been termed a
'God's-eye view' and 'the view from nowhere'. Where representations of three-dimensional
structures are available (mashups of buildings are available for many major cities), it is
possible to fly among them, and Microsoft's Virtual Earth goes further by allowing the user
to browse images captured at ground level from moving vehicles. Nevertheless the view
remains essentially static and distanced.
2.4.2 Privacy
High-resolution images capture information that is often beyond the reach of normal
ground-based observation. One can see into backyards and into gated communities, and
monitor compliance with regulations regarding brush-clearing and irrigation, as well as
possibly illegal activities such as the growing of marijuana. Sub-metre imagery is capable
of detecting cars parked in driveways or the destruction of villages in Darfur. The base
imagery of Google Earth is in many cases of higher quality than the best mapping publicly
available, especially in countries such as India where mapping is regarded as an issue of na-
tional security. During the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, large amounts of information
on property damage were available via Google Earth, including photographs taken on the
ground. It is clear that Google Earth, and the other geographic information technologies
to which it is linked, are capable of an unprecedented level of vision into the daily lives of
individuals.
2.5 Research challenges
The first generation of geobrowsers as represented by Google Earth clearly present significant
opportunities to the social sciences, both as tools and as subjects for research. Several of the
former are reviewed in this final section.
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