Google Earth Outreach launched a program to support Canadian NGOs with software tools and support in a three-day workshop with the Tides Foundation in Vancouver, September 25-28, 2011. The workshop ended with a public event at the Woodwards featuring presentations by Rebecca Moore from Google Earth Outreach and David Suzuki.
The workshop aimed at capacity-building for NGOs and included sessions on Google Fusion Tables, Google mapping API, GIS to Google Earth basics, Advanced KML coding and and the Open Data Kit, a set of tools for mobile data collection. The Google Earth Outreach team also provided some first insights into the new Google Earth Builder, an online GIS for geodata management with tiling capabilities, and Google Earth Engine, a future environmental monitoring platform that adds more complex analytical functions such as GHG calculations.
More than 50 representatives from various NGOs participated and I was very impressed by their projects they presented after just three days: A complete Google Earth inventory of the Mountain Pine Beetle damage in British-Columbia, the cinematic fly-through of a crane in GoogleEarth illustrating bird migration routes, and many more. Therefore, I am confident that the workshop achieved its first goal which was capacity-building among NGOs. The workshop site also provides many valuable tutorials on Google’s geospatial tools and is open to everybody.