Google Earth Engine

Noel Gorelick

Who Am I?

"The software guy" on 6 NASA Mars missions

Engineer at Google for 9 years

Author Google Mars and Google Moon

Co-founder Google Earth Engine

Google's Mission

Organize the world's information and

make it universally accessible and useful.

My Mission

Organize the world's information and

make it universally accessible and useful.

scientific

v

The Saga of Landsat

Series of 8 satellites

Continuous record since 1972

Multiband optical and thermal

Data became "free" in 2008

The Saga of Landsat

Only 3.5M scenes out of ~7.1M in the catalog (4.1 PB)The rest are held at international receiving stations

The Saga of Landsat

Only 3.5M scenes out of ~7.1M in the catalog (4.1 PB)The rest are held at international receiving stationsTapes blocked at the border by the Army

The Saga of Landsat

Only 3.5M scenes out of ~7.1M in the catalog (4.1 PB)The rest are held at international receiving stationsTapes blocked at the border by the Army35 year old tapes …

The Saga of Landsat

Only 3.5M scenes out of ~7.1M in the catalog (4.1 PB)The rest are held at international receiving stationsTapes blocked at the border by the Army35 year old tapes … have to be baked in an oven before reading

The Saga of Landsat

3 years to download the entire archiveProcessed from tape, on demand

USGS Download Stats: http://landsat.usgs.gov/Landsat_Project_Statistics.php

What did we do with all that data?

29 yearsof satellite data

2,068,467landsat scenes

909terabytes

2,000,000hours of computation

66,000CPUs

on

https://googleblog.blogspot.ch/2013/05/a-picture-of-earth-through-time.html

We made a video!

We made a video!

24 Terapixels

We made a video!

24 Terapixels

We made a video!

24 Terapixels

We made a video!

24 Terapixels

We made a video!

24 Terapixels

TimeLapse

Launched with Time MagazineThousands of embedsMillions of views

So what?

So what?

These guys...

live here...

So what?

724,000 km2 forest loss in Brazil since 1970 (17%)It's visible from space, "just" need a deforestation detector

Earth Engine

Earth Engine

Earth Engine

WhyStarted by for public benefit

Operationalize science, at scale

GoalsRemove access and capacity barriers

Foster open science

Promote transparency, reproducibility & collaboration

Maximum throughput, minimum latency

WhyStarted by for public benefit

Operationalize science, at scale

GoalsRemove access and capacity barriers

Foster open science

Promote transparency, reproducibility & collaboration

Maximum throughput, minimum latency

Build the world's most advanced geospatial analysis platform

Goals

Build the world's most advanced geospatial analysis platform

Goals

… so we don't all die.

Build the world's most advanced geospatial analysis platform

Goals

to help solve the world's biggest challenges… so we don't all die.

Build the world's most advanced geospatial analysis platform

Goals

DeforestationDroughtDiseaseFamineFloodingFireEarthquakes

… so we don't all die.

Build the world's most advanced geospatial analysis platform

to help solve the world's biggest challenges

Global Forest Extent and Change

Source: Hansen, Potapov, Moore, Hancher et al. , Science, 15 November 2013

Drought Monitoring

Source: Hansen, Potapov, Moore, Hancher et al. , Science, 15 November 2013Desert Research Institute - Justin Huntington and Charles Morton

Global Surface Water

Source: Pekel, Belward, Cotton & Gorelick, 2015

Global Crop Map

Source: Prasad Thenkabai, Jun Xiong, USGS

Disease Early Warning: Malaria Risk

Swaziland National Malaria Control Program / UCSF Global Health Group

Earthquake Ground Velocity Prediction

Source: David Lallemant, Stanford

Global Development

DMSP-OLS Nighttime persistent lights

What Is Earth Engine

A "big data" platform for remote sensing

A fast computation & visualization system,

for global-scale geospatial analysis,

with a large scientific data catalog.

Scientific Data Catalog

Imagery

Landsat 4, 5, 7, 85,500,000 scenes

30+ MODIS Level 2Daily, NBAR, LST, ...

Sentinel-1 GRD

Sentinel-2

Hyperion / ALINAIP, ASTER, ...

Scientific Data Catalog

ImageryGeophysical

TerrainSRTM, ETOPO, GMTEDHIRES Global DEM project

Landcover Cropland Surface Temperature Other

Global forest change, canopy heightBiomass estimates, Burned areas, Vegetation continuous fields

Scientific Data Catalog

ImageryGeophysicalClimate & Weather

MOD08 TOMS & OMI Ozone NCEP/NARR Precipitation

TRMM, Daymet, RTMA, CHRIPSCFSV2, GFS, PERSIANN

Forecast and ReanalysisNEX DCP-30, MACA, NLDAS, GLDAS,

GRIDMET

Scientific Data Catalog

ImageryGeophysicalClimate & Weather

More than 250 public datasetsContinuously Updated +4000 images/day5.5 PB

Pick your: projection, resolution, bands, bounding-box, visualization

What Can It Do?

Get an Image

What Can It Do?

Library functions or your own script

Get an Image

Apply an algorithm to an image

What Can It Do?

Time, Space, Metadata

Get an Image

Apply an algorithm to an image

Filter a collection

N → N

Get an Image

Apply an algorithm to an image

Filter a collection

Map an algorithm over a collection

What Can It Do?

N → 1 or N → M

What Can It Do?

Get an Image

Apply an algorithm to an image

Filter a collection

Map an algorithm over a collection

Reduce a collection

What Can It Do?

Get an Image

Apply an algorithm to an image

Filter a collection

Map an algorithm over a collection

Reduce a collection

Compute an aggregate

What Can It Do?

Good At

Band mathSpectral unmixingML ClassificationSegmentation,Template matchingTexture analysis

Parallelizable Operations

Bad At

Finite Element AnalysisHydrologic FlowIteration and Recursion

earthengine.google.com/signup

Thank you

gorelick@google.com