Google Expands Availability of Earth Engine to 'Restore a Livable Planet'

pcmag.com:

Google has made Earth Engine, which purportedly offers access to more than 70 petabytes of "analysis-ready geospatial data," available to businesses and governments around the world.

"Google Earth Engine combines data from hundreds of satellites and earth observation datasets with powerful cloud computing to show timely, accurate, high-resolution insights about the state of the world’s habitats and ecosystems — and how they’re changing over time," Google says(Opens in a new window).

Google makes its ambitions for Earth Engine clear in the announcement:

"It’s not too late to protect and restore a livable planet for ourselves and generations to come. Climate change experts have declared the next ten years the ‘Decade of Action’, a critical time to act in order to curb the effects of climate change(Opens in a new window). Making a global difference will require a transformational change from everyone, including businesses and governments. With Google Earth Engine, we hope to help organizations contribute to this change."

Earth Engine was released to researchers in 2010—roughly nine years after Google Earth itself launched—and now it's expanding to other groups nearly 12 years later. Google says that Earth Engine is now available "as an enterprise-grade service through Google Cloud."

The company explains(Opens in a new window) on the Google Cloud website that Earth Engine offers "geophysical, weather, climate, and demographic data" in addition to "near-real-time satellite imagery." (Which is what allows Google Earth itself to provide a surprisingly detailed look at pretty much the entire planet.)

Google says Earth Engine is available to "government researchers, least-developed countries, tribal nations, and news