Using Google Earth for Near Real Time Natural Hazard Monitoring - 40:53 - Mar 2, 2007 - Videos

Google engEDU(4 Ratings) Rate:Google Tech Talks February 23, 2007 ABSTRACT Every year several catastrophic natural hazards strike somewhere on Earth. These may cau...all » Google Tech Talks February 23, 2007 ABSTRACT Every year several catastrophic natural hazards strike somewhere on Earth. These may cause thousands of lives, cause damages of billions of dollars, destroy natural landmarks, cause tsunamis, floods, or landslides. Most of these events are caused by nature but their potential catastrophic consequences are tied to overcrowding and the emergence of megacities; the proliferation of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage facilities; and the existence of high dams, and other facilities whose destruction pose an unacceptable risk of global reach. Thus the study of natural hazards and of the processes that govern their occurrences has become a fundamental challenge for the survival of our civilization. Although natural hazards have been observed and studied for over 2000 years, most of the data available was acquired using often unreliable and sparse ground measurements. It was thus impossible to study the complementary nature of different land, ocean and atmospheric parameters. Currently there are tenths of satellites which have been launched to study the Earth, its changing environment and the interaction and coupling between different parameters. Such remote sensing data, usually available freely through the internet, provide an unprecedented access to global high resolution measurements, which can be used to forecast, monitor and recover from major disasters. The talk will present current research being carried out at the Center for Earth Observing and Space Research (CEOSR) at George Mason University in collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to provide near real time information about environmental hazards using Google Earth. Such information include both place-marks for latest events, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, etc, and near real time remote sensing images associated with such hazards. The talk will discuss different ocean and atmospheric parameters, such as chlorophyll concentration, sea surface temperature, cloud cover, etc. Google Earth will be presented as a teaching and research platform to study natural hazards.«

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