Geospatial Data Management

The Google Earth Way
By Matteo Luccio | Published July 18, 2012

The Google Maps API, Google EarthPro, and Google Earth Enterprise have revolutionized the adoption and use of maps within the enterprise. Google added a fourth com- ponent to its suite of enterprise map offerings for business last fall now called Google Maps Engine (GME, formerly Google Earth Builder). GME is a cloud-based geospatial data management solution for imagery (satellite and aerial, called raster files) and computerized map files with lines (called vector files, in the lingo of geospatial technologies).

The ability to leverage geospatial data investments has a lot to do with the ability to easily share that data with others within the organization. That, in turn, has a lot to do with how and where that data is stored. Storage and sharing of imagery data in particular has been a long-standing chal- lenge for many organizations that are large consumers of imagery data — such as governments, oil and gas compa- nies, and research institutions. Much of this data is stored manually in filing cabinets and on bookshelves, and when needed is again searched for manually, unless an organization has invested in an appropriate data management system.

While other geospatial data management systems are available that offer a variety of functionalities tied into workflows, such as DataDoors, GME is designed for businesses to work seamlessly with the Googlemapping suite of products. GME “provides enterprise organizations with the tools they need to bring mapping into their day-to-day decision-making process,” says Dylan Lorimer, GME’s product manager. Google, he explains, wants to make it easy for organizations to build maps. “The mission of GME is to make the innovation we have built into our consumer products available to businesses.” For businesses looking for a basic geospatial data storage and publishing solution, GME offers an interesting option.

GME for Pseudo Dummies: Technical Details of GME

Creating maps in GME only requires a standard Web browser.

The platform can create maps compatible in 2D with Google Maps and in 3D with Google Earth.

Users upload the files via a catalog interface, which allows them to enter layer names, attribution, tags, source, and other metadata.

Users can upload raw satellite imagery and perform masking, edge matching, some color balancing, and “feathering” of the tiles in order to create a seamless image map.

Users can create and manipulate map layers and style them dynamically to create thematic maps (however, not heat maps).

GME allows users to publish their data in three ways: directly to a Google Earth client, through Web Map Services (WMS), and in Google Earth and Google Maps API for developers to access.

To help ensure the quality of the data uploaded, the data catalog is access- controlled; Google then performs some limited quality control.

GME users can receive standard or premium support through the Google Enterprise program; they also have access to online documentation, contextual help, code snippets and examples, a user group, and two yearly user conferences.

How GME Works

Like a company that buys a building much larger than it needs for its own operations and then leases some of this space, Google is licensing the mapping infrastructure that it developed internally to deliver its most popular consumer products, Google Earth and Google Maps, together with the power of its massive server farms. GME is a cloud-based platform that enables private companies and government agencies to store, manage, and process their geospatial data on Google’s server farms and display it through Google Earth, Google Maps, and applications on Android phones.

It enables users to view maps from desktop and mobile platforms, share them with individuals and groups, and visually analyze geospatial data without requiring extensive training in geographic information systems (GIS). However some degree of tech- nical literacy is still required to use GME.

One of the data pipelines that is available at the push of a button, Lorimer explains, is massive image processing, whether of one image or thou- sands, gigabytes or petabytes. “As a user, you can get access to Google’s infrastructure of thousands of machines, with no set-up required. We will have customers that will have a tremendous amount of imagery. They will not need to provision any additional hard- ware; it will scale automati- cally.” However, it is not clear whether this will speed up image processing, compared to software and services that are already available.

For most users, GME will not replace a GIS any time soon, due to its limited ability to perform spatial analysis and geoprocessing. “Right now, we are not exposing any standard vector analytical operations beyond spatially constrained search,” says Lorimer. “We want to provide all the useful mechanisms you may need to access and make use of your data. The goal is to expose all of our infrastructure for enter- prise use.”

According to Google, GME supports...

The complete article is available in the Spring 2012 Digital issue of LBx Journal.

SEE MORE IN THIS CATEGORY:

Who is looking out for your location data privacy?

The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) recently released a report rating technology companies’ stewardship of users’ personal data. Twitter and Sonic Inc. received high marks while Verizon, AT&T and Apple received low or no marks. The EFF looked at six privacy best practices categories which include:

By Natasha Léger | May 21, 2013 May 21, 2013

Product Review: Find Spot

Spotlite 2.O Pet GPS Locator

SecurusGPS released their advanced pet locator Spotlite 2.0 in early March 2013. I had the privilege of trying out this nifty gadget. It is designed to be worn by a 10 pound or greater sized dog. I don’t have a dog, so I did the next best thing. I used it to track my car and to track my partner’s suitcase (with his permission of course) as he traveled from Colorado to the East Coast. Let’s call them both Spot.

By Natasha Léger | April 22, 2013 April 22, 2013

Scaling Map Wizardry

To 100 million Microsoft Office 2013 Users

Marketing, operations, and business managers have been asking their IT departments for several years now for ways to see data on a map. IT and GIS (or IT and geo applications) have not mixed well as departments or as integrated priorities. This difficulty left many managers and departments to seek other solutions or to engage in skunk works projects with a variety of available technologies, including free and open source applications. These work-arounds to productivity have had both their successes and challenges. Microsoft has come to the rescue...

By Natasha Léger | April 18, 2013 April 18, 2013

COLUMNS

Executive Interview

Bringing More Attention to the Location Profession

Past, Present, and Future

MINDY BROWN, President of Bruun Consulting shares the past, present and future of location and GIS. She was one of the early pioneers of the geospatial industry and watched it ebb and flow over the last thirty years. As such she has a unique perspective on how the location professional has evolved over the years.

By Natasha Léger | March 8, 2013 March 8, 2013

Scaling Enterprise GIS

A Retail Perspective

Jillian Elder is not your average GIS Manager. Jillian sees GIS as another tool in a broader information toolbox that helps to solve a problem. As her team sits within the Market Planning and Research Group of Walgreens that reports to the CFO, she is charged with finding and accessing the best data from across the organization to answer particular questions. This interview discusses the challenges encountered in implementing an enterprise-wide location information strategy.

By LBx Staff | January 29, 2013 January 29, 2013

The Case for Tracking

Assets, People, and Pets

Securus, Inc. is a mobile safety and security products and services company that is taking machine-to-machine (M2M) hardware and software solutions to a new level. They have built an M2M software platform that enables a user to track any asset, person, or pet. The convergence of more efficient hardware, improved mobile connectivity, and other sensor technology innovations are redefining the possibilities and affordability of the location tracking market. We spoke with Chris Newton, President and CEO of Securus, Inc., about the market drivers for assets, people, and pet tracking.

By LBx Staff | January 9, 2013 January 9, 2013

Game Changer

Humans As Sensors

Adding the Time Dimension

As Di-ann is driving around the Bay Area she uses Waze (http://waze.com) to find her way. From Waze she gets routing, traffic and road closure information. In exchange, Waze tracks her location and knows her ultimate destination. It knows that she is going slower than expected on Highway 101 and that she is probably in traffic.

By Brady Forrest | January 13, 2010 January 13, 2010

Back Behind the Firewall

Net Technologies Move From Consumer to Enterprise

About five years ago, the group I worked for at Microsoft looked at what was happening in the blogosphere and decided to bring it in-house. We saw that the conversations needed a

By Brady Forrest, O'Reilly | May 25, 2009 May 25, 2009

On Minding The Store

Think Locally, Act Globally

It’s the Customer, Stupid!

There was a time, not too long ago, when “global” was a concept, but hardly a reality. As a corporation pushed its horizons beyond the relatively homogeneous local market, it encountered increased diversity and complexity, strange customs and even stranger legal environments. There were no global markets, no truly global products and few global brands. Corporations at best were multinational, jerry-built conglomerates of local institutions, each catering to relatively homogeneous local markets, each differing from the next.

By Robert Avila | August 3, 2011 August 3, 2011

Corporate Evolution

Are corporations prepared to go where their policies are taking them?

Corporations have been pursuing an implicit model that has shed much of the internal political, social and cultural qualities that characterized past corporations and have transformed themselves more and more into purely economic institutions. As this model has advanced, corporate loyalty, a largely political concept, has been replaced by the formal or “at will” employment contract, a purely economic arrangement.

By Robert Avila, Managing Director, Future Crunch | June 14, 2011 June 14, 2011

The Rebirth of Brand Management

It’s Not the Lead; It’s the Customer Experience that Matters

Brand is the social contract of business, the implicit agreement between the parties in a transaction about the nature of their long-term relationship. One is tempted to quote Hobbs to the effect that economic life devoid of brands tends to be “solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short,” a description eerily evocative of today’s commercial environment. As with political theory, when discussing brand it is easy to slip into morality tales. The recent collapse of the Tiger Woods and Toyota brands calls up images from Greek tragedy with choruses of talking heads lamenting their fall from greatness.

By Robert Avila | June 30, 2010 June 30, 2010