The Map Room

Some more material about updating road data after disasters that I missed the first time around (and am only getting to now). Via Mapping Hacks, a San Francisco Chronicle article that discussed updating driving directions in the wake of the MacArthur Maze, but that also looked at the big picture: updates take an awful long time. Another case in point, and an understandably touchy one: the U.S. Route 90 bridge in Mississippi was destroyed by Katrina a year and a half ago, but it’s still in the mapping databases, and directions are still given over that now-nonexistent bridge.

What does this say when compared to the MacArthur Maze update, which occurred within days of the collapse? Such updates — like error corrections of obvious driving direction snafus — seem manual in nature. Someone has to catch them, and report them. So it might be easy to infer that, as far as the tech community is concerned, a major commuter route in the Bay area — their backyard — is going to get more attention, and be deemed much more urgent, than a highway bridge in Mississippi. On the other hand, there’s no comparing the very real difference in impact. But I imagine that the alacrity with which the MacArthur Maze was updated might be seen as a slight where similar situations did not result in speedy updates.

Previously: How Online Maps Update Their Data After Major Road Closures.

Google has apparently replaced post-Katrina images of New Orleans with imagery from before the hurricane clobbered the city, and people are upset about that, the AP reports (choose your source for the same article: Boston Globe, Guardian, Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, USA Today).

My reaction to this depends on what this old imagery replaces. There are (at least) two possibilities, and I don’t know which is true.

If it replaces imagery of New Orleans underwater, then reverting to old imagery might be the least worst option: New Orleans is still devastated, but it’s dry. It takes a while to update satellite and aerial imagery, so if there hasn’t been a flyover since the storm, it might simply be past time to revert to non-disaster imagery. If the city was on fire during the flyover, you wouldn’t keep the blaze burning on the image server for years afterward, would you?

But, if it replaces imagery taken of a dry, damaged New Orleans some time after Katrina, then someone has some explaining to do. I don’t, however, assume a conspiracy without actual evidence of said conspiracy.

Or did the “Katrina” button just get removed? (It was removed at some point, because it’s not there now. When, I don’t know.)

Thanks to Maggie for the tip.

Previously: Hurricane Katrina: Google Maps and Other Imagery.

Update, 3/31 at 10:40 AM: Frank reports that the imagery change actually took place last September. (See, we were paying attention.) The post-Katrina imagery was, as I thought, right after the storm and was lower-quality than the older, pre-Katrina imagery. So when you think about it, the pre-Katrina imagery is more useful than the alternative, notwithstanding any symbolic implications. New imagery would, of course, be nice.

Update, 3/31 at 3:30 PM: A congressman is harrumphing about this, too (via The Earth Is Square).

Google has received an award for its work — by the Google Earth team and others — during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. Think back to that time and recall how so many people absolutely relied on imagery imported into Google Earth as overlays. (The urgency of those new images, incidentally, taught us a lot about how they’re produced, I think.)

Here we go again.

Google Earth Blog has a collection of downloadable automated storm tracking tools (KMZ file).

Google Maps Mania points to a couple of Google Maps based storm trackers.

Spatially Adjusted links to ESRI’s existing hurricane viewer and the Geospatial One Stop Hurricane page.

Many of the sites that tracked Katrina and Rita should, I think, be applicable as well; see previous hurricane coverage.

Kathryn Cramer reports that new Rita overlays for Google Earth based on updated NOAA imagery are now available.

Meanwhile, Wired carries an AP story about mapping the storm surge from Katrina: surveyors are trying to create an atlas of the storm surge, essentially, to prepare better for the next one.

The Hurricane Katrina diaspora map (details here) “was based on more than 40,000 postings on Internet ‘safe lists’ by Katrina survivors. ePodunk analyzed messages containing both the person’s hometown and the location after fleeing the storm.” Via Rebecca’s Pocket….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Kathryn Cramer reports that the first post-Hurricane Rita images from the areas hardest hit by the storm have been posted by NOAA. As was the case with Katrina, the interface — starting with a base map index page — is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Fantastic multidimensional satellite imagery of Hurricane Rita from NOAA; via Spatially Adjusted. Also, you can now track Hurricane Rita with Virtual Earth; via Scoble. On an organizational note, I’ve combined entries about Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita into a new…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Directions has compiled a page of links to U.S. government maps related to Hurricane Rita; this will be updated as new information becomes available, they say. James Fee, in re ESRI helping various government agencies: “It seems that everyone has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Tyler Mitchell talks about the behind-the-scenes work to process approximately 1,500 NOAA images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and upload them to the Katrina Image Warehouse, using open-source software; the basics were up and running within 48 hours. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

There are several resources for keeping tabs on the next volley of tropical storms to hit the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. NOAA’s Storm Tracker page for Rita and Philippe has tracking maps and satellite photos. Google Earth…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Glenn of GISuser.com has been collecting photos, maps and other graphics related to hurricanes — Katrina in particular, naturally — on his Flickr account. Late to the party, but Microsoft has put in a solid, if buggy effort with…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s been a few days since I last posted on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Here are a few more links. Apologies for letting them accumulate. ESRI’s Hurricane Katrina Disaster Viewer is, according to ESRI’s Lisa Kensok, who submitted this…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Forbes reports that FEMA’s outdated flood maps meant that many people in Hurricane Katrina’s path didn’t have flood insurance because, according to those maps, they weren’t in a flood plain and didn’t need it. More generally on inaccurate flood maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.

More flood maps of New Orleans (see this morning’s entry). Kathryn Cramer, whose blog has turned into an immense resource for Hurricane Katrina information, links to a Google Maps hack that shows the approximate water depth in flooded areas; because…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Over on GeoCarta, Roger goes beyond the latest satellite and aerial photography of New Orleans (which is what’s getting the lion’s share of attention); he looks at NOAA’s survey of the damage to the Mississippi River shipping channel and has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In addition to the Forbes article I mentioned yesterday, both the BBC and New York Times (free registration required) cover the use of Google Maps and Earth by ordinary users to collect and distribute information about the disaster — i.e.,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A lot of insensitive things have been said about the people of New Orleans after the hurricane hit. To people who say it’s their own damn fault for living in an area subject to hurricanes, Troll Princess has this response….  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been getting e-mail from people asking about the state of various locations in and around New Orleans and other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. I’m not the best person to answer such questions — I’m just someone from small-town…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Orbimage’s satellite photos of New Orleans post-Katrina, here and here, are in black and white; as a result, the detail is much sharper and the flooded parts of the city are much more visible, as the example above (courtesy…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been reorganizing my categories a bit; my Hurricane Katrina entries now have their own category. More satellite imagery: Before and after satellite images from GlobalSecurity.org. Landsat’s before and after images seem to have more detail than the others. NASA…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Updated) More satellite imagery from the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina is being made available. Space Imaging’s Image Gallery has images of New Orleans before Katrina and Mobile, Alabama after Katrina (via Cartography). Digital Globe’s Hurricane Katrina Media Gallery has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Updated) Susan Kitchens has compiled and sent along an animated image (680-KB animated GIF) that shows the New Orleans area before and after Hurricane Katrina passed through; per her suggestion, I’m hosting it on my server. See previous entries: Hurricane…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Many updates) Watch Hurricane Katrina’s path via satellite imagery or radar; both are NOAA pages and both require Java. Via Paulo. Kathryn Cramer has been collecting aerial images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, along with some…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(Many updates) I’ve been looking for maps and satellite imagery of Hurricane Katrina. So far, I’ve found this page from the National Hurricane Center and this page (a popup) from the NOAA Storm Tracker site, which has many of the…  •  Continue reading this entry.