Google erased Katrina damage

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-111987
Friday, April 06, 2007



Google erased Katrina damage
Satellite imagery on Google Maps showed a pre-hurricane New Orleans. Some wonder why.

Residents of New Orleans lived through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and are still dealing with the momentous job of rebuilding. They probably wish they could follow the lead of Google Maps and just pretend the hurricane never happened.

But some in Congress are wondering why Google took post-Katrina satellite imagery off its popular mapping site and replaced it with pre-hurricane images that show a vibrant and untouched New Orleans.

There are plenty of conspiracy theories out there trying to explain the switch.

Some think the city is behind it, in a rather feeble attempt to boost lagging tourism.

A few bloggers wonder if the Bush administration, which has made little progress in real efforts to restore New Orleans, pressured Google as a way to at least make virtual progress.

Neither seems particularly likely.

Following congressional inquiry, Google found a way to update the maps to a 2006 vintage.

But Google still owes some explanations for the flap. Its excuses so far have been vague and unsatisfactory. A representative said the maps up there now are the best the company has to offer. Many factors went into the decision, he said, "everything from resolution, to quality, to when the actual imagery was acquired."

Apparently, accuracy and timeliness are not important considerations.

Many New Orleans residents are displeased. They wonder why images of Mississippi, also ravaged by Katrina, were more current.

The questions are valid, and Google officials should be motivated to provide clear answers. Google's impressive search engine and map service are the first place many turn to when looking for information online.

If that information can't be trusted to be both accurate and current, then Google loses as much as everyone else.

use
www.ask.com
ask has dictionary, thesaurus and everything one click away

So we know what has been lost, and what needs to be rebuilt,

And not allow the city to be reconfigured into suburbanized
gated communities.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/014441.html

Asked and Answered on Google Katrina

Press release: "Rep. Brad Miller, Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science & Technology Committee...asked Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to explain why Google had changed its satellite maps of the New Orleans region to pre-Hurricane Katrina images."

# Google Blog: "in September 2006, the storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements. We continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on a dedicated site (earth.google.com/katrina.html). Our goal throughout has been to produce a global earth database of the best quality -- accounting for timeliness, resolution, cloud cover, light conditions, and color balancing. Given that the changes that affected New Orleans happened many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent comments. Nevertheless, we recognize the increasingly important role that imagery is coming to play in the public discourse, and so we're happy to say that we have been able to expedite the processing of recent (2006) aerial photography for the Gulf Coast area (already in process for an upcoming release) that is equal in resolution to the data it is replacing. That new data was published in Google Earth and Google Maps on Sunday evening."

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http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/post-katrina-images-of-new-orleans-on.html

Post-Katrina images of New Orleans on Google Maps
Friday, September 02, 2005 at 10:31:00 PM
Posted by Bret Taylor, Google Maps Product Manager

Satellite imagery of New Orleans taken on Wednesday, August 31st is now available on Google Maps.

Enter “New Orleans” in the search field at the top of the page, or drag and zoom the map to the area. A red "Katrina" button will appear at the top right of the map, next to the existing map buttons. Older images for the area are still available too - click the "Satellite" button to switch to those.
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