![]() That is, it's easy to get free low-res images without a particular time-stamp (such as by using Google Maps, Bing Maps, or Google Earth). I found that the tradeoffs are always the same: cost (you can get nearly anything if you want to pay), resolution, and timestamps. Then, for each one, I explored a bit about what they offered, what they're good at, and the considerations to keep in mind. ![]() I started just by collecting the links to many different providers. (And let me know if you find any errors.) Not only does the sheet put everything I find into a single location, but as I read through the results, I'll find different properties of the image providers that I might want to sort or filter. Naturally, if you've got a bunch of sources like this, my natural inclination is to organize them on a Google Spreadsheet. (And, to tell the truth, I was expecting to find something like this on the results page.) One of the more useful results here is " 15 Free Providers" with links to several satellite image services. When faced with a problem like this, I usually start with my "list of" trick, beginnings with a search like this:Īnd sure enough, this gives a set of web pages that have long lists of potential sources (even including 4 ads at the top of the SERP pointing to commercial sources). What are the best resources to get time-stamped satellite images? How can an ordinary SearchResearcher get their hands on satellite images not very long after (or even during!) a major event? So today's Challenge is a kind of collective ask for all people who do SearchResearch:ġ. Getting near-real-time imagery would be great, but often that's outside the budget of many non-professional searchers. As you can appreciate, the big problem is getting your hands on current images-or at least accurately time-stamped images from the not-too-distant past. Many Chinese imaging companies, for example, will not sell any satellite pictures of China, North Korea, Taiwan, or Tibet.The Challenge for last week was to find good aerial or satellite images that are more-or-less in realtime. These are far from comprehensive, and some images are withheld from public access for national security reasons, a process known as shutter control. While the entire surface of the planet gets photographed multiple times a day at low resolution, the sharpest images from the latest commercial satellites can still cost upwards of $3,000, according to a price list at Apollo Imaging, a satellite imagery aggregator. Since our providers often focus on cities and places that are more heavily populated, these regions tend to get updated imagery more frequently.” The satellite images on Google Maps cover only about one-fifth of Earth’s surface-but 98% of its population. High-resolution Planet images of parts of The Line do seem to be available for licensing, although none have surfaced publicly on Google Maps to date.Ī Google spokesperson told MIT Technology Review: “We are constantly updating satellite imagery as it becomes available from our imagery providers. We tend to concentrate first on those areas that exhibit the most change (e.g., cities, etc.) but will fill in those other areas of the globe as well.” Stephen Wood, senior director of Maxar’s news bureau, told MIT Technology Review: “We do not have any recent high-resolution imagery that has been collected over these areas.” He wrote that the company primarily focuses on its customers’ areas of interest but “when we have available imaging time, we will collect other areas as part of our overall mission to continually update the entire globe with high-resolution imagery. “My immediate reaction is that no one bothered with high resolution because it’s in the middle of a desert and high-resolution imagery is incredibly expensive to own and distribute.” “I’ve not heard of any commercial company trying to restrict things,” says Doug Specht, a geography lecturer at the University of Westminster in London. “Probably the simplest solution is that a money interest is purchasing those images at the highest level, where they maintain an exclusive right to them.” ![]() “If there’s no Maxar images acquired over an area that is experiencing rapid economic investment, something fishy is going on,” Van Den Hoek says. One of the main commercial uses for satellite imagery is to help companies understand how their rivals or entire countries are faring in the global marketplace-to see, for example, “how many cranes are active on the Manhattan skyline right now, or oil tankers are in port,” says Jamon Van Den Hoek, a geography professor and director of the Conflict Ecology Lab at Oregon State University.
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