3 Unknown Ways How Google Maps Is Helping The World

Google’s greatest asset is its huge chunks of data. If you think this data is only used for the social and knowledge initiatives of the company, you are probably wrong. Different organizations in the world are coordinating with Google to power some nonprofit initiatives which will do well for the entire humanity and bring a global change.

Here are some projects which harvest Google’s power.

Google Earth Engine is Completely Monitoring Earth’s Environment

Scientists are looking out for various measures to monitor the changes in earth’s environment. For this purpose, Google is helping them with Google Earth technology which combines satellite imagery and historical data.

Earth Engine combines Google Earth's data and Google’s immense cloud computing infrastructure to provide a powerful environmental analysis package that can be used to measure all kinds of data about the Earth, including extent of forests and oceans to measuring carbon levels in rainforests.

The time for scientists to process these data is chopped down by Google's cloud computing resources, and the software makes things easier with pre-processing features like automatically removing clouds and haze from satellite images. Google is donating a whopping 10 million CPU hours to researchers who want to use Google Earth Engine, which should do plenty to help track deforestation and measure the world's water resources.

Google Map is Helping the Disabled

This is the story about how Google Map helped disabled persons to find comfortable places that serve to their requirements. It can be restaurants, Spas or theaters. Jason DaSilva, a filmmaker and activist in the disability community is behind the project named AXS Maps. He took Google Map and embedded it into the project which collects crowd-sourced data on accessibility for people with canes, walkers, wheelchairs and even parents with strollers in various places in and around cities.

According to Kevin Bluer, an AXS Map developer, "One of the goals is to be able to see venues that are accessible before you go. How spacious is it on the inside? Do they have an accessibility ramp and so on.” AXS Map invites everybody to contribute the real, human powered information.

Google Earth Is Conserving Wildlife

‘Save the Elephants,’ a project created by London based nonprofit organization uses Google Earth to visualize the elephant tracking data from across Africa. It uses Google Earth’s global database of Earth imagery and detailed mapping information to track the elephants on a moving 3D backdrop of high definition images, all in real time! This allows them to monitor how elephants live which has greatly enhanced management and security of the elephants particularly in areas of Kenya, where poaching and habitat threats are causing a large drop in elephant population. The data from monitoring is used to boost enforcement efforts for ranger patrols.