Breakout Sessions

Google Earth Sessions

Google Earth Web Usability Session

Presenters: Various

Description: Join us for a usability session in which you'll play with some of latest features under development in Google Earth Web and give your feedback to the team. There will be limited spaces at this session and this session will be under NDA.

Google Earth Pro Basics

Presenter: Brian Ellis

Description: In this session, you'll learn how to use Google Earth Pro to create and share maps. We’ll give a quick overview of the interface and discuss how Google updates and adds to the satellite imagery layers. Then we'll cover the basics of how to create all the basic feature types - points, lines, and polygons - for creating your own maps. You’ll also learn how to add further detail to mapped sites using custom icons, images and videos. Finally, we’ll discuss methods of sharing your Google Earth maps with others. We'll briefly cover printing and sharing files. Then we'll learn how to create flyovers and animations of your maps in Google Earth for use in presentations and videos.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: Google Earth Pro on Desktop (download here)

Slides

Google Earth Pro: Advanced Features

Presenter: Christiaan Adams

Description: Learn about the advanced features of Google Earth Pro, such as importing and visualizing GIS datasets (vector & raster), animating GPS data, creating and generating movies of tours and more. The session will also touch on the basics of KML coding for advanced visualization and content creation, and may be adjusted based on the interests of the attendees.

Prerequisites: Previous experience using Google Earth Pro preferred

Suggested tools & software: Google Earth Pro on Desktop (download here), and possibly a text editor for programmers (Notepad++, TextEdit, etc.) if you want to try KML coding.

Slide Deck

KML Coding

Presenter: Christiaan Adams

Description: In this class we will learn about the the basic structures of KML, and how to customize or construct your own KML content for visualization and storytelling in Google Earth. It will be most useful for people who have created some KML files through the drawing tools in Earth & Maps, or by converting geo datasets into KML, and who want to take their KML development to the next level.

Outline + Resources document

Google Earth Studio Sessions

Intro to Google Earth Studio

Presenter: Mike Tavendale

Description: Google Earth has a massive store of satellite and aerial imagery from large-scale geological features to individual city buildings. The imagery is updated frequently with whole new cities in 3D being added regularly. Earth Studio is the easiest way to leverage this imagery for still and animated content.

Prerequisites: Prior knowledge of keyframe animation a plus but not mandatory

Suggested tools & software: Google account (or Gmail), Google Chrome, Adobe After Effects (not mandatory)

Google Earth Studio: Advanced Workshop

Presenters: Patrik Blohmé

Description: Google Earth Studio is a web-based animation tool for Google Earth imagery used by news media professionals and filmmakers. In this session, we will dive into advanced features, tips and best practices. We will also look at applications of the tool today and share examples.

Prerequisites: Use Earth Studio or prior working knowledge of animation software.

Suggested tools & software: Google account (or Gmail), Google Chrome, Adobe After Effects (not mandatory)

Street View Sessions

Capturing your own 360 Images and Videos

Presenters: John Bailey, Natalie Phillips, Deborah Schenker

Description: Google Street View in Maps, Earth and App, provides access to over seven million miles of interactive 360-degree panoramas captured in over 75 countries, across all seven continents and in the world’s oceans. Learn how to explore this imagery and how to add your own images to the Street View archive using 360 cameras.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: Google account, Google Street View and Ricoh Theta-S apps installed on phone (Android or iOS)

Session resources:

360 Storytelling

Presenters: John Bailey, Natalie Phillips, Deborah Schenker

Description: Google Street View is a vast and diverse archive of geolocated 360 imagery, with unlimited potential for exploring and telling stories about the planet we live on. We will discuss different ways to interact with and engage others with this imagery, including exploring using Cardboard VR viewers and Google Expeditions, an application that takes viewers on virtual field trips in Street View.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: Google account, Google Street View and Ricoh Theta-S apps installed on phone (Android or iOS)

Session resources:

More Geo Tools

My Maps & Tour Builder

Presenter: Allie Lieber

Description: This session will cover tools for easy content creation & storytelling. You’ll learn how to tell engaging stories about places using Tour Builder. You’ll also learn how to use My Maps, a simple tool for creating interactive and embeddable maps on the web.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: A Google Account

Session resources:

Fusion Tables Working Session

Presenter: Vanessa Schneider and Chris Herwig

Description: Fusion Tables user? Please join us for a working session where we'll discuss your current projects and hear your feedback. Note: This session will be under NDA, as we'll be discussing future plans.

Prerequisites: You must be an active Fusion Tables user, with examples to share, and sign an NDA when you arrive to the workshop room.

Basics of Google Maps Platform (Maps API)

Presenters: Christiaan Adams and Jordon Mears

Description: Take "baby steps" into the world of Google Maps Platform by trying out the Google Maps Javascript API. In this session, you'll create a basic "Hello World" Maps API webpage, and will learn how to do things like change the options (background map type, initial location, etc.), overlay data and KML layers, and start to showcase your first Earth Engine maps. While this is taught for non-programmers by a non-programmer, we will work with snippets of code copied-and-pasted from the developers.google.com website.

Prerequisites: Some comfort opening the code of a basic HTML page, but no prior JavaScript coding necessary.

Slide deck

Getting started with Geospatial Analysis

Presenter: Karin Tuxen-Bettman

Description: Google Earth Engine and Google BigQuery can handle huge amounts of big data, whether it be vector, raster, or tabular data. In this session, you'll get a taste of how to perform a few basic geospatial analysis operations in Earth Engine and BigQuery. While we will get into some code editing, this is a session taught by a non-programmer, for non-programmers. You’ll learn about some new tools, some cool functions, and get your hands dirty just enough to be dangerous!

Prerequisites: Some understanding of GIS data and geospatial analysis.

Analysis to Impact

Presenter: Chris Herwig

Description: This session will focus on tools and technologies to amplify the impact of your scientific analyses and research. Thinking about publishing the results of your analysis? This session is right for you. We'll highlight some exciting technologies you can take advantage of today to help get your analysis out of the Earth Engine Code Editor and into the world. We'll touch on a variety of tools, including Google Earth and Maps. Beyond mapping, we're a Search company after all, so we'll also go over content markup you can use to make your content more discoverable and semantics more explicit -- so it's easier to find and use by other researchers.

Prerequisites: None

Session Resources:

Mobile Data Collection

Open Data Kit 101

Presenters: Devaja Shah

Description: Open Data Kit is a set of tools that allows you to collect field data, such as text, photos/videos, and GPS location from an Android device even where there's no internet connection and publish it to the web when you're back online. We will walk through existing use cases, go into the field for a fun collect, and then map and visualize the group’s project using a Google Spreadsheet.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: Android phone (we’ll have extras) & Google Spreadsheets

Slides

Open Data Kit: Advanced Forms

Presenters: Tanya Birch

Description: Learn about the more complex types of survey forms that you can create for mobile data collection projects using ODK Build, as well as using a more flexible XLSforms format. You'll also learn about other options for setting up your ODK project beyond Google Drive and Sheets.

Prerequisites: Basic working knowledge of ODK

Suggested tools & software: Open Data Kit from Google Play, Google Sheets

Ground Sneak Preview

Presenters: Gino Miceli

Description: Come get a sneak preview of Ground, an open-source, map-first, end-to-end data collection platform for occasionally connected devices. You’ll get an overview of the platform and its history as a Google open source project. You’ll learn how to use the web application to create a new data collection project and design a data collection form for collaboration with your team. Then you’ll learn how to use the Ground mobile app to collect data in the field and sync it to the database for visualization. We’ll end with our long-term vision for Ground and how you can sign up to be one of the first trusted testers!

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: Chrome browser

Slides

GPS & Geotagged Photos

Presenter: Karin Tuxen-Bettman

Description: A lot of nonprofit groups take photos in the field, or want to track their hikes, treks, and work outside. This session will give hands-on training of a few great tools for creating maps of GPS tracks and GPS-tagged photos. We won't get into field surveys with forms (that's the ODK sessions), but you’ll learn a few simple tools for tracking your location in the field, collecting photographs, and then putting them on a map.

Prerequisites: None, but we encourage you to take this online tutorial.

Suggested tools & software: Google Photos installed on your phone (iOS, Android)

Earth Engine Sessions

Earth Engine & Timelapse

Presenters: Tanya Birch

Description: This session will give a brief overview of Google Earth Engine, our planetary-scale platform for Earth science data & analysis and take a deep dive into a tool created using Earth Engine: Timelapse, a global, zoomable video that lets you see how the Earth has changed over the past 32 years. You'll learn how to use Timelapse to create and share powerful visuals of change happening in the locations of your choosing.

Prerequisites: None

Global Forest Watch

Presenter: Thailynn Munroe

Description: In this session, we will walk through the Global Forest Watch open web platform and the Forest Watcher web and mobile applications. You will learn about the multitude of datasets hosted on the Earth Engine based web platform, including global forest datasets, global concessions datasets, and many other regionally specific conservation datasets. You will participate in interactive tutorials to learn how to perform and interpret results of various types of analyses on the fly. We will also demonstrate the use of the Forest Watcher application, a near-real-time forest monitoring and reporting application created to help “boots on the ground” (i.e. forest rangers, local communities, and NGOs) validate and address deforestation as it happens.

Prerequisites: None

Google Earth Engine 101A: Introduction to Earth Engine for beginners, part A

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

Description: The Earth Engine API (application programming interface) provides the ability to create your own algorithms to process raster and vector imagery. This session is geared toward people who would like to analyze satellite and vector data. The session will be hands-on, using the Earth Engine Javascript code editor. This part of the class will focus on accessing imagery, creating composites, and running analyses over stacks of images.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with at least one software language, or at least not be afraid of learning as we go.

Slides

Google Earth Engine 101B: Introduction to Earth Engine for beginners, part B

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

Description: This is part two of the Getting Started class (EE101). This part of the class will continue where part 1 left off, focusing on computing statistics on imagery, creating charts, exporting the results of your analyses.

Prerequisites: Earth Engine 101A

Slides

Google Earth Engine 102A

Presenter: Nick Clinton

Description: Learn about multi-temporal classification and error handling in Earth Engine (prior EE experience required). Part 1.

Examples (includes Part 1 and 2)

Google Earth Engine 102B

Presenter: Nick Clinton

Description: Learn about multi-temporal classification and error handling in Earth Engine (prior EE experience required). Part 2.

Examples (includes Part 1 and 2)

Earth Engine Project Work

Lead: Tyler Erickson, Earth Engine Team

Description: Need time to reflect on what you have learned and chat with Earth Engine experts about how to apply it to you work? Join us for this (relatively) unstructured time to use on your own projects relating to Earth Engine and get expert advice from the Earth Engine team and other users.

Prerequisites: EE101

Suggested tools & software: Earth Engine, you own projects & data

Importing and Exporting data to/from Earth Engine

Presenters: Chris Herwig

Description: This session will cover how users can bring their own vector/raster data into Earth Engine and the different ways users can take the results of their analyses out of Earth Engine.

Prerequisites: None

Session Resources:

The Earth Engine Python Environment

Presenters: Tyler Erickson

Description: For Python developers with intermediate to advanced Earth Engine experience who want to understand options for developing with the Earth Engine Python API.

This session will give an overview of options for development environments for using the Earth Engine Python API, focusing on tools from the open source Jupyter project (http://jupyter.org). Note that this session is not a tutorial on writing Earth Engine Python code, but rather will focus on development environment setup.

Prerequisites:

  1. Prior experience using Python programming language.
  2. Prior experience in using Earth Engine.
  3. A GitHub account (https://github.com/join).

Slides

Image segmentation and object based methods for image analysis

Presenters: Nick Clinton

Description: Image segmentation and object based methods for image analysis

Example (script 17)

User Interfaces + Earth Engine Apps

Presenters: Lauren Scott

Description: This class will introduce new tools that make it easy to design interactive Earth Engine visualizations. Learn to make interactive maps with Earth Engine, including widgets for labels, buttons, sliders, panels, charts and maps.

Prerequisites: Earth Engine 101 or equivalent.

Hands On: Change Detection from Landsat composites

Presenter: NIck Clinton

Description: A hands-on course in change detection from Landsat annual composites. Methods include post classification comparison, direct classification of change, spectral index differencing, spectral angle differencing, spectral distance thresholds.

Prerequisites: Earth Engine 101 or equivalent.

Examples

Pixels, Points & Polygons

Presenters: Nick Clinton

Description: Learn about tabular data and vectors in Earth Engine.

Slides

Google Earth Engine API Tour

Presenter: Nick Clinton

Description: A tour of Reducers, Charts, Joins and Arrays (not hands on).

Prerequisites: Google Earth Engine 101A and 101B

Slides

Non Geo Tools

VR & Tour Creator

Presenters: France-Lee Griggs and Courtney Hampson

Description: Learn how to use 360 cameras and Street View imagery to build immersive 360 degree tours with Google's Tour Creator. Once you create your tour, you can publish it to the web for people to see on their phone, computer, or in a VR viewer.

Prerequisites: None

Suggested tools & software: A Google account

Slides

Google for Nonprofits

Presenters: Rahim Adatia

Description: Learn about other Google tools that help nonprofits fundraise more easily, collaborate more efficiently, and share their stories with a wider audience.

Slides

Partner Breakout Sessions

Voyager Partner Panel

Moderator: Vanessa Schneider

Description: The launch of the new Google Earth last year introduced a new way of storytelling with Voyager, an in-app showcase of compelling stories, data and maps. Hear from Voyager partners and developers as they share case studies and best practices for building Earth stories, and learn about ways for you to start telling your own map-based stories.

Google Slides

Earth Pro & My Maps Partner Panel

Moderator: Emily Henderson

Description: In this session, we’ll learn about how organizations are using Earth Pro and My Maps to solve real-world problems. The session will focus on why the organizations choose the tool they did, how they implemented the tool, who is using it and lessons learned.

Presentations:

  • Mauri Mapping, Mapping our Cultural Footprint - Hineamaru Lyndon, Ngatiwai Trust Board, Geospatial Analyst and Special projects
  • Assessment and Monitoring of Mangrove plantation using Google Earth - R.Nagarajan, Senior Scientist (Coastal System Research) and GIS and Remote Sensing Lab Coordinator, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation
  • Mapping The Spread of Vector-borne Diseases in the United States - Katie Pickett, Geospatial Lead, PublicHealthMaps (publichealthmaps.org, @PublicHealthMap)

Mobile Data Collection Partner Panel

Moderator: Allie Lieber and Devaja Shah

Description: In this session, we’ll learn about how organizations are using mobile data collection tools to solve real-world problems. The session will focus on why the organizations choose the tool they did, how they implemented the tool, who is using it and lessons learned.

Presentations:

Earth Engine Partner Panel

Moderator: Karin Tuxen-Bettman

Description: In this session, we’ll learn about how organizations are using Earth Engine to solve real-world problems. The session will focus on why the organizations choose the tool they did, how they implemented the tool, who is using it and lessons learned.

Presentations:

  • First ever 30 m Cropland Map of the World, GFSAD30 project - Pardhasaradhi Teluguntla PhD, Research Scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (croplands.org)
  • Snow Information for Everyone: New Snow Metrics Using Earth Engine - Ryan L. Crumley, Ph.D. Candidate, Water Resources Science, Oregon State University
  • Tracking and Visualizing Air Quality Trends using Google Earth Engine - Nathan R. Pavlovic, Air Quality Scientist - Fire, Fuels and Remote Sensing Group, Sonoma Technology, Inc. (aodtrends.nathanpavlovic.com)
  • A Dynamic Spatial Prioritization Tool to Coordinate and Inform Conservation Planning in a Changing Climate - Andrew Shirk, Research Ecologist, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group (cascadiapartnerforum.org/cascadia-climate-adaptation-strategy, cascadiapartnerforum.org/regional-spatial-tool)

Earth Map - a new FAO-Google tool for historical analysis of environmental and climate parameters

Presenter: Giulio Marchi, UN FAO

Description: Earth Map is a FAO-Google free tool for quick historical analysis of environmental and climate parameters to facilitate evidence-based policies through a simplified approach to Earth Engine.

Prerequisites: Chrome browser, Earth Engine developer account (sign up here)

Slides