Google Earth Tools
Since Google Earth was released in 2005, it has quickly become a valuable resource for imagery analysis. According to the official Google blog in 2011, the software has been downloaded over a billion times. In light of its increasing popularity, a few tools are listed here that may enhance your Google Earth experience.
1. Google Earth Imagery Update KML File
Keeping track of imagery updates for locations of interest is easy. Every time imagery is updated in Google Earth, a KML file is released displaying the location of the latest collection. That KML will always be made available below for convenience.
Download
2. Range “RINGS” for Google Earth
RINGS is an online tool that draws concentric circles, an annulus, or a sector of an annulus in Google Earth. Ring radii may be specified from 10 to 1,000,000 US survey feet or meters, and from 0.25 to 10,000 miles, nautical miles (1 nmi = 1852 m), or kilometers. Line and area colors are selected from a 24-color palette, line width may be specified from 0.1 to 10, and area opacity may be specified from 0 to 100%.
Download
3. Space Eye Digital Image Processing Tool
Space Eye is a remote sensing image processing software assisting users with algorithm testing and research of remote sensing image processing. The beta version of the software supports several functions such as image filtering, edge extraction, morphological transform, and most importantly a side-by-side greyscale-to-color comparison.
Download
4. Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File (DAFIF) KML
The Digital Aeronautical Flight Information File (DAFIF) was publicly available from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency until 2006 but has since been removed due to threats from the Australian government claiming copyright infringement. As a result, all that remains are other open source databases building upon the original 2006 version. Unfortunately, none are a complete representation. Included below is a KMZ version of the airfields from the DAFIF 2006, converted for google earth. In addition, there is a pivot table of the of the data collected by ourairports.com with over 44,945 entries, last updated on 01MAR2013.
Download
5. NGA/MSP Geotrans 3.2 (Geographic Translator)
Developed by BAE Systems’ Mensuration Services Program, Geotrans is an application which allows for easy conversion of geographic coordinates among a variety of coordinate systems, map projections and datums. While GEOTRANS runs in Microsoft Windows, LINUX, and UNIX environments, the version provided here is for Windows.
IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind, GEOTRANS was meant to run in a Java 32-bit environment. Therefore, if you have a Windows 64-bit operating system, by extension you probably have a Java 64-bit environment. A side-step around the often reported “unable to access the MSPCCS file” is to simply change the settings to have your computer run this specific program in a Windows XP environment. Alternatively, you can downgrade your Java.
Download
6. Map Window Open Source GIS
The MapWindow GIS Project and software development team is focused on creating tools and technologies for GIS end users and programmers that are licensed under free and open source software licenses. The project was initially started in 2003 and has since become a great addition to the open source tools to manipulate data for use inside and out of Google Earth. For instance, additional plugins for this GIS system, such as KML2Shape, converts Google Earth KML and KMZ files into shapefiles for use in a GIS while other plugins do the reverse.
