ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: Jianming Liang, Jianhua Gong, Wenhang Li T

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 146 (2018) 91–107
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ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/isprsjprs
Applications and impacts of Google Earth: A decadal review (2006–2016) T

a,b,c,⁎ a,c a,c
Jianming Liang , Jianhua Gong , Wenhang Li
a
State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
b
School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287, USA
c
Zhejiang-CAS Application Center for Geoinformatics, Jiashan 314100, China
A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Since Google Earth was first released in 2005, it has attracted hundreds of millions of users worldwide and made
Digital Earth a profound impact on both academia and industry. It can be said that Google Earth epitomized the first-gen-
Google Earth eration of Digital Earth prototypes. The functionalities and merits that have sustained Google Earth’s lasting
Remote sensing influence are worth a retrospective review. In this paper, we take the liberty to conduct a bibliometric study of
GIS
the applications of Google Earth during 2006–2016. We aim first to quantify the multifaceted impacts, and then
Influence
to develop a structured understanding of the influence and contribution associated with Google Earth. To ac-
complish these objectives, we analyzed a total of 2115 Scopus publication records using scientometric methods
and then proceed to discussion with a selected set of applications. The findings and conclusions can be sum-
marized as follows: (1) the impact of Google Earth has been profound and persistent over the past decade.
Google Earth was mentioned in an average of 229 publications per year since 2009. (2) Broadly, the impact of
Google Earth has touched upon most scientific disciplines. Specifically, during 2006–2016, Google Earth has
been mentioned in 2115 publications covering all of Scopus’s 26 subject areas; (3) the influence of Google Earth
has largely concentrated in GIScience, remote sensing and geosciences. The extended influence of Google Earth
has reached a wider range of audiences with a concentration in fields such as human geography, geoscience
education and archaeology.
1. Introduction been thriving since the early 2000s in both academia and industry.
Various terminologies such as “Google Earth”, “Virtual Globe”, “Virtual
Digital Earth is a vision popularized by former US Vice-President Al Earth”, “Digital Earth” and “Digital Globe” have become the norm in
Gore’s speech (Gore, 1998) aiming to create a digital representation of the literature. A bibliometric research was conducted to quantify how
the Earth’s physical and social environments (Cragliaet al., 2012). frequently each of these key terms were cited in the literature (Blaschke
Earth’s environments encompass not only the static structures and et al., 2012). The results showed that “Google Earth” and “Virtual
properties but also the dynamic geo-processes and human activities. As Globe” appeared most frequently in the ISI Web of Science database
the volume and complexity of information grow exponentially with the from 2005 to 2010 (Blaschke et al., 2012).
scale and level of detail at which the Earth is to be represented, a NASA World Wind and Google Earth are among the first generation
complete and perfect digital replica of the Earth might not be achiev- of virtual globes. World Wind is an open-source virtual globe first de-
able in the near future. Indeed, the advent of the ‘Big Earth Data’ era are veloped by NASA in 2003 for use on personal computers and then
bringing many challenges and opportunities to Digital Earth’s devel- further developed in concert with the open source community since
opment (Guo et al., 2017). New frameworks, methods and theories, 2004. Google Earth was released in June 2005. Although Google Earth
such as spatial cloud computing (Yang et al., 2011, 2013) and Big Data came out a little later, it has received far more public attention and
analytics (Baumann et al., 2016), are needed to support utilization of generated much greater impacts, as supported by the finding that the
‘Big Earth Data’. Digital Earth has been established as a key research total number of ISI-indexed papers on Google Earth is nearly six times
area. From 1998 to 2015, there has been 11,061 research articles re- of that on Microsoft Virtual Earth, NASA World Wind and ESRI/ArcGIS
lated to Digital Earth published in recognized international journals Explorer combined together (Yu and Gong, 2012). It was said that
(Liu et al., 2017). Google Earth (Fig. 1) typified the first generation of virtual globes
Efforts toward computer realization of the Digital Earth vision has which achieved many but not all the elements of this vision (Goodchild
⁎
Corresponding author at: No. 20 Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China.
E-mail address: jliang41@asu.edu (J. Liang).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.08.019
Received 18 August 2017; Received in revised form 30 July 2018; Accepted 25 August 2018
Available online 12 September 2018
0924-2716/ © 2018 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J. Liang et al. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 146 (2018) 91–107
Fig. 1. Visualization of multisource geospatial data on Google Earth.
et al., 2012). modeling and simulation. Gore envisioned a future computer system
By 2006, Google Earth had already proved effective in many ap- that has the capability to “display an unprecedented amount of in-
plications such as relief efforts (Nourbakhsh et al., 2006), lake mapping formation about our planet and a wide variety of environmental and
(Shen et al., 2006) and health geography research (Curtis et al., 2006), cultural phenomena”, from which Goodchild (2008) drew the first and
and had made an enormous impact on GIS by making GIS accessible for to some extent most important use case of Digital Earth, i.e., visuali-
people without GIS expertise (Goodchild, 2006). By 2007, Google Earth zation. Google Earth offers such extreme ease of use that even a “young
had been downloaded more than 100 million times (Goodchild, 2007). child” can learn to manipulate and make use of in ‘ten minutes’. The
In the meantime, it started to influence international relations and third use case ‘interoperability and mashups’ resonates with Gore’s
global representation, exemplified by intervention in the humanitarian notation that Digital Earth” is ‘a multi-resolution, three-dimensional
crisis in Darfur (Patterson, 2007) and the terrorist attack in Mumbai representation of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of
(Bratton, 2009). Although Google Earth has no analytic functions and geo-referenced information’. Last but not least, Gore also dreamed of a
was not designed to replace professional GIS software, its mashup and Digital Earth” that can be used to ‘project future states of the planet’s
data dissemination capability could be an asset to geographers in the surface, interpret the data that we are collecting about our planet and
era of NeoGeography and Web 2.0 (Hudson-Smith et al., 2009), which assist policy making’, which Goodchild (2008) summarized as ‘mod-
was termed “the new era for geo-information” (Li and Shao, 2009). eling and simulation’.
Moreover, there has even been unexpected implications arising from At a time when Google Earth had already been routinely used in
the opening up of a global inventory of satellite imagery to the public, Earth science research, Yu and Gong (2012) comprehensively reviewed
for example, remodeling the paradigms of archaeological investigation the development of Google Earth from an Earth scientist perspective. A
(Kennedy, 2011; Myers, 2010; Luo et al., 2014) and geoscience edu- comparison of Google Earth and other virtual globes revealed that
cation (Bodzin, 2008; Monkkonen, 2008; Blank et al., 2016). Google Earth was mentioned in the literature nearly six times more
Three years after the launch of Google Earth, Goodchild (2008) frequently than any other virtual globes. Yu and Gong (2012) sum-
retrospectively analyzed the functionalities of Digital Earth with re- marized the merits and limitations of Google Earth and offered re-
ference to the applications of Google Earth. Goodchild (2008) identified commendations for improving and augmenting the functions to better
four use cases which differed from conventional GIS use cases, in- serve Earth science applications. By combining the use cases of
cluding visualization, ease of use, interoperability and mashups, and Goodchild (2008) and Stensgaard et al. (2009), Yu and Gong (2012)
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classified the applications of Google Earth into eight categories, in- potential double-counting errors. The results show that only U.S.,
cluding visualization, data collection, data exploration, data integra- China, UK and Australia remained in the top-10 countries for all three
tion, modeling and simulation, validation, communication/dissemina- years. An interesting finding is that three out of the four emerging
tion of research results and decision support. economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs), had entered the top-
These use cases, however, do not characterize Google Earth’s dis- ten list by 2016.
tinctive merits that might have contributed to its lasting popularity and The 2115 publications cover all of Scopus‘s 26 subject areas. This
impact. Visualization as a use case, for instance, is a basic function reveals Google Earth has had cross-disciplinary implications (Fig. 4).
shared by all virtual globes. Yet the easily accessible high-resolution These subject areas, however, are too broadly defined and do not reflect
imagery, terrain data, street photographs, place labels and other sup- research activities in more specific fields like GIS or remote sensing.
porting data greatly augments Google Earth’s value as a visualization We narrowed the 2115 publications down to a set of journal papers
tool. Google Earth’s user-friendly interface, labelling tools and inter- in the English language with “Conference Paper”, “Book Chapter” and
operability further contribute to Google Earth’s utility for data collec- “Erratum” categories excluded. Then, a journal ranking analysis was
tion, data exploration and validation. The Keyhole Markup Language conducted to show the impact of Google Earth in different research
(KML) extends Google Earth’s visualization capability by accom- areas. Journal papers without valid “ISSN” and “DOI” were also
modating user-defined content up to four dimensions, 3D space and eliminated to ensure reliability of sample data sources. By doing this,
time. Moreover, Google Earth API, although was no longer supported, we reduced the dataset down to a list of 725 articles published in 397
used to allow custom applications to be developed and run on web mostly international peer-reviewed journals. The 397 journals span a
browsers. Google Earth API opened up possibilities for Google Earth to wide spectrum of overlapping research areas including remote sensing,
be conveniently integrated into business workflows across a wide range GIS, geography, geosciences, environmental science, biology, computer
of fields. science, information science, oceanography, climatology, physics,
On December 12, 2014, at a time when Google Earth API was still chemistry, agriculture, engineering, health sciences, social sciences and
being widely used in supporting operational Web applications, Google humanities. A total 116 articles were attributed to the top-ranking 26
surprisingly announced that Google Earth API would be deprecated and journals, each of which has 5–22 publications (Fig. 5). A total 394 ar-
eventually be shut down. As of December 2015, all virtual globe ap- ticles, making up 54.41% of the collection, were published in the
plications built on Google Earth API were rendered completely defunct. bottom-ranking 340 journals (Table 1). The top 26 journals are mostly
This not only marks a turning point in the development of Google Earth, about Earth science subjects with a focus on remote sensing and
but compelled Google Earth API users to migrate their applications with GIScience, while the lower-ranking journals cover a mixture of Earth
alternative solutions. In the meantime, a WebGL version of Google science and non-Earth science subjects.
Earth has recently been released. This represents an industry trend to-
ward device-independent authentic “geobrowsers”. 3. Analysis of Google Earth’s functions and applications
More than a decade has passed since Google Earth was launched in
2005. In the past five years, Google Earth has witnessed many new To understand the functional relations of Google Earth’s applica-
applications which might not have been mentioned in the review of Yu tions, we analyzed Google Earth’s various functions and organized them
and Gong (2012). In addition to the generic use cases that Goodchild into a hierarchy. In this way, each of the applications to be discussed
(2008) broadly discussed, the distinctive merits and functionalities that can be linked up with one or more of these functions. For instance,
characterize Google Earth and might have been pivotal to its success gathering of ground truth data from Google Earth relies on functions
need to be closely examined. The functionalities and merits that have such as provision of high-resolution imagery, annotation and mea-
sustained Google Earth’s lasting influence are worth an in-depth dis- surement; visualization of geological cross sections cannot be achieved
section, as they may provide important reference for the future devel- without KML; integration of Google Earth into a data dissemination
opment of Digital Earth. Against these backgrounds, we take the liberty framework relies on Google Earth API. We broke down Google Earth’s
to conduct a bibliometric study of the applications of Google Earth over core functions into five levels based on a combination of expert
the period of 2006–2016. knowledge and generalization of the use cases from two previous stu-
dies (Yu and Gong, 2012; Goodchild, 2008). In order to form a multi-
2. Data gathering and bibliometric analysis level hierarchy, we ranked these functions by importance to the in-
tegrity of the Google Earth architecture. As shown in Table 2, from the
We retrieved a total of 2115 publication records from the literature top all the way down to the bottom, each level becomes increasingly
database Scopus by searching with two filters: include “Google Earth” essential to Google Earth’s functionality. For example, the bottom-level
and exclude “Google Earth Engine”. In the returned results, the term function “provision of a robust virtual globe environment” serves as the
“Google Earth” was mentioned at least once in the title, abstract or foundation for all higher-level functions.
keywords. It should be noted that “Google Earth Engine” is a recently Level 1 lays the foundation for all higher-level functionalities by
developed cloud computing platform for remote sensing research and providing a robust DE environment that supports various basic func-
does not directly relate to “Google Earth”. A bibliometric analysis based tions including data services, spatial referencing, terrain tessellation,
on the retrieved literature data was conducted to show the spatio- 2D rendering, 3D rendering, spatial operations, networking and colla-
temporal patterns of Google Earth’s development over the past decade. boration, but these functions are not directly exposed to the users. Use
We start with a multi-year trend analysis to assess Google Earth’s of Google Earth’s functionalities comes in various forms. In some cases,
overall impact (Fig. 2). All the retrieved publication records were ag- users only interactively explored the data (Hirmas et al., 2014; Kopcha
gregated by year to show the year-on-year growth. Fig. 2 shows the et al., 2015; Edwards et al., 2013; Agapiou et al., 2016) or captured the
period from 2006 to 2009 witnessed the fastest growth. Having ex- data for offline analysis (Zhao et al., 2016; Wei et al., 2016; Benedek
perienced a rapid growth from 60 publications in 2006 to a peak of 260 and Szirányi, 2009; Li et al., 2011; Yu et al., 2016a, 2016b; Cheng et al.,
publications in 2012, the number of publications remained above 200 2016; Ni et al., 2015; Ling et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2016) without making
till 2016. This suggests Google Earth is still being widely used recently, explicit use of the higher-level functionalities, and these are considered
although there has been no significant growth since 2012. Level 2 use cases. Level 2 provides access to basic GIS functions in-
We then explore the spatial distribution of the publications by cluding measurements, labelling, geometry drawing, digitization,
country for the three years, 2006, 2011 and 2016 (Fig. 3). As each overlay and data import and export, which support activities such as
publication was attributed separately to each of its contributing data collection, validation (Logiurato, 2012; Tsutsumida et al., 2016;
country, the country-aggregated total publications were subject to Bovenga et al., 2012; Clark et al., 2012; Luedeling and Buerkert, 2008;
93
Fig. 2. Multi-year trend for publications in which Google Earth was mentioned.
Mildrexler et al., 2016). The Level 3 functionality enables the use of (1) Visualization and data exploration. Visualization is an essential
advanced KML features in support of applications such as animations, function of Google Earth and is ultimately supported by the core
time-varying data visualization, simulations, 3D modelling, data rendering functionality from Level 1 (Table 1). Although visuali-
sharing and integration of multimedia information (Akbar et al., 2013; zation can sometimes be considered an independent use case itself,
Standart et al., 2011; Crutcher and Zook, 2009; Welham et al., 2015; for example in the work of Standart et al. (2011), it is heavily relied
Doering and Veletsianos, 2007). Level 5 enables Google Earth to be on by other use cases including data collection, validation, mashups
seamlessly integrated into custom application workflows by using the and dissemination.
Google Earth API (Yovcheva et al., 2013; Van Zonneveld et al., 2014). (2) Data collection. Different approaches were taken to collect data
In the two previous studies, Yu and Gong (2011) summarized from Google Earth, for example capturing satellite images for off-
Google Earth’s applications into 8 use cases including visualization, line analysis which relies mainly on Level 2 (Hamdy et al., 2016a,
data collection, validation, data integration, communication and dis- 2016b), and on-screen digitization, sample gathering or geometric
semination, modelling, data exploration, decision support, while measurements which relies mainly on Level 3 (Tang et al., 2010;
Goodchild (2008) reviewed the 4 use cases from the Gore speech () Visser et al., 2014). There were even cases in which web applica-
including visualization, ease of use, interoperability and mashups, tions were developed using the API (Level 5) to crowdsource data
modelling and simulation. The two groups of use cases overlap each (Fritz et al., 2009).
other to some extent and thus they need to be harmonized. Visualiza- (3) Validation. In remote sensing, validation is the process of com-
tion was merged with data exploration. Data integration was merged paring the contents derived from images to ground truth. Ground
with interoperability and mashups. Modelling (Yu and Gong, 2011) was truth can be collected from Google Earth images using the Level 2
merged to modelling and simulation. Communication and dissemina- (Yu et al., 2016a, 2016b; Cheng et al., 2016) or Level 3 functions
tion, and decision support are compound use cases that make use of a (Yousefzadeh and Mojaradi, 2012; Chaabout et al., 2015).
mixture of functions including data exploration, collection, integration (4) Data integration/interoperability and mashups. Google Earth sup-
and visualization. Here we examine the following six use cases in re- ports integration of heterogeneous georeferenced data including the
lation to Google Earth’s functions (Table 2): base satellite imagery (Level 2), shapes created within Google Earth
Fig. 3. Ranking of countries by contribution of publications mentioning Google Earth.
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Fig. 4. Ranking of Scopus subject areas by number of publications mentioning Google Earth.
(Level 3), shapes and raster data imported from external sources the social and physical processes dream in DE systems remains al-
such as ESRI Shapefile and GeoTIFF (Level 3), and user-created most entirely unrealised (Goodchild, 2008), representation of time-
KML contents such as 3D time-varying data (Level 4). varying phenomena/processes can be achieved via the KML ex-
(5) Modelling and simulation. Although Gore’s vision that modelling of tensions (Yu and Gong, 2011).
Fig. 5. Ranking of journals by number of publications mentioning Google Earth.
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Table 1 efficient server. Ellipsoid tessellation and scalable visualization of

Number of journals and papers mentioning Google Earth. global geospatial datasets are among the most essential functions of a
Number of publications per journal Number of journals Number of papers virtual globe framework. Almost all existing virtual globes were de-
signed with these functions in mind. Real-time rendering of large-scale
10–22 7 118 terrain has been researched for decades. Traditional terrain rendering
5–9 19 110
algorithms have been extended to achieve large-scale terrain visuali-
3–4 31 103
2 54 108
zation (Lindstrom and Pascucci, 2002; Losasso and Hoppe, 2004).
1 286 286 Multi-resolution image datasets can be visualized by draping on a tes-
Total 397 725
sellated terrain model under a unified spherical coordinate system. The
global geospatial datasets to be visualized, however, are too large to
reside on the client. Instead, they are compiled and published on the
Table 2 server with optimized spatial indexing, and then streamed to the client
Hierarchy of Google Earth’s Functionalities. upon request triggered by the view-dependent visualization me-
chanism. Google Earth stands out as an exemplary virtual globe soft-
Level Functionality
ware for delivering smooth and consistent user experience. This has
Level 1 (bottom) Provision of a robust virtual globe environment benefited not only from a user-centered client that provides extreme
Level 2 Provision of easy access to global geospatial datasets ease of operation and smooth terrain visualization, but a commercial-
Level 3 Provision of GIS functions
class server that accommodates millions of concurrent users worldwide
Level 4 Provision of an extensible data-sharing and visualization
framework while maintaining efficient data streaming.
Level 5 (top) Provision of an extensible development framework
3.2. Provision of easy access to global geographic datasets
(6) Ease of use. Google Earth’s success is attributable largely to the The attraction and popularity of Google Earth may be largely at-
extreme ease with which users can learn to manipulate its interface tributable to the coverage, completeness, resolution and variety of the
(Goodchild, 2008), for example to explore satellite imagery (Level geospatial data it provides. Google Earth’s rich collections of geospatial
2), to draw symbols (Level 3) and to import extended KML contents datasets, including road networks, administrative boundaries, place
(Level 4). names, oceans and weather data, can be easily explored by users even
without knowledge of GIS. Google Earth further distinguished itself
In the following literature review, each application is discussed in from other virtual globes partly by providing free, easy and stable ac-
relation to the function level which it is most dependent upon. In this cess to a global inventory of satellite imagery collections at spatial re-
way, we aim to develop a structured understanding of how Google solutions from Landsat (15–30 m) to QuickBird (60 cm). All these in-
Earth’s functions have contributed differentially to its popularity and formation has been made publically available without any technical
hope to draw some lessons that may be relevant for future Digital Earth barriers. Therefore, Google Earth was believed to have pushed forward
research. Having summed up the multi-level functions of Google Earth, the democratization of GIS technologies and data (Butler, 2006;
we narrowed the 725 journal articles down to a pool of application Goodchild, 2007).
cases and proceeded to discussion with these typical cases. High-resolution satellite images from Google Earth have been em-
ployed in a multitude of applications. They were acquired from Google
3.1. Provision of a robust virtual globe environment Earth to extract various types of information such as biomass (Singh
et al., 2015), urban extents (Mering et al., 2010), buildings (Guo et al.,
A robust virtual globe environment relies on a reliable client and an 2016; Dikmen and Halici, 2014), mining operations (Connette et al.,
Table 3
Examples of using Google Earth as a data collection tool.
Type of data/information Examples
Land use/land cover Zhujiang River Delta, China (Dai et al., 2010); Siberia, Russia (Liu et al., 2016a, 2016b); A village in Aswan, Egypt (Hamdy et al., 2016a, 2016b);
Southern Ghana (Shih et al., 2016); Global Land Cover Data – GLCNMO2008 (Tateishi et al., 2011); Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region, China (Zhao
et al., 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2016d); A rural village in southern Mali (Dewald et al., 2016); Wuhan City, China (Hu et al., 2013)
Ecological/agricultural Palm tree (Topalovic, 2016); cotton crop (Liu et al., 2016a, 2016b); tropical forests (Asner et al., 2009); tropical forest biomass (Ploton et al.,
2012); vegetation cover (Petesse et al., 2016); rice crop (Levin, 2016); rice paddies (Guan et al., 2016); wheat fields (Jin et al., 2016); forests in
Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao (Mermoz and Le, 2016); tropical above-ground biomass (Singh et al., 2015); coastal wetland biomass (Aslan et al.,
2016); taiga-tundra trees (Montesano et al., 2009)
Human settlement Population distribution (Yang et al., 2012); 3D reconstruction (Garcia-Dorado et al., 2013); building damage (Zheng et al., 2011); age of urban
blocks (Hamdy et al., 2016a, 2016b); building footprints (Dikmen and Halici, 2014); airport runway (Li et al., 2014a, 2014b); neighborhoods
(Chang et al., 2009); building shadow (Guo et al., 2010) urban areas (Mering et al., 2010); buildings (Ghaffarian and Ghaffarian, 2014); cemetery
(Al Raeid et al., 2016); housing (Kamanga et al., 2015); tsunami vulnerability (Pagnoni and Tinti, 2016); village buildings (Guo et al., 2016)
Archaeological Archaeological looting in North Peru (Lasaponara et al., 2014); archaeological sites in Eastern Macedonia, Greece (Kaimaris et al., 2011); looting
of archaeological sites in Jordan (Contreras and Brodie, 2010); qanats in northern Xinjiang of China (Luo et al., 2014); archaeological looting in
Apamea, Syria (Tapete et al., 2016); Camp Delta prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (Myers, 2010); stone-walled structures in southern
Gauteng, South Africa (Sadr and Rodier, 2012)
Geological/geomorphological Landform characteristics of Jordan Valley basin, Jordan (Akawwi, 2013); sand ridge zone in the Taklimakan Desert, China (Yue et al., 2008);
landslide susceptibility in Patu Khola watershed, Nepal (Regmi and Poudel, 2016); Dalinor volcanic swarm, Inner Mongolia, China (Gong et al.,
2016); landslide susceptibility in Sicily, Italy (Conoscenti et al., 2016); tidal flats (Sarmiento et al., 2016); alluvial fans in Calabria, southern Italy
(Antronico et al., 2016); alluvial fans in Santa María Valley, Argentina (Peña-Monné and Sampietro-Vattuone, 2016); fault morphology of the
Kumroch Fault, Russia (Cervera, 2013)
Hydrological Cooling island effects of water body (Du et al., 2016); groundwater potential zones (Ibrahim-Bathis and Ahmed, 2016); piezometric mapping
(Hentati et al., 2016); hydraulic roughness (Karim et al., 2016); tsunami inundation (Rao and Lin, 2011)
96
2016), land use/cover (Hu et al., 2013), airport runways (Li et al., tiles. On the one hand, these pre-processed tiles have partly or even
2014a, 2014b), population distribution (Yang et al., 2012), archae- completely lost their spatial relations and attribute information, which
ological sites (Sadr and Rodier, 2012; Tateishi et al., 2011), geomor- are needed for spatial analysis. On the other hand, results from spatial
phological features (Akawwi, 2013), and they were categorized as analysis also need to be pre-processed before they can be displayed on
shown in Table 3. Utilization of Google Earth’s free satellite images for virtual globes, which may lead to data processing latency and conse-
information extraction, as a use case, does not rely on Google Earth’s quently diminished user experience.
advanced functions such as geometric measurement, KML or Google Google Earth’s GIS functionality has been extensively used in data
Earth API. Instead, the user starts by freely exploring satellite images on collection, remote sensing validation, and data integration/interoper-
Google Earth and then zoom in on an area of interest to save the image ability and mashups (Table 4).
for offline use. This means application of Google Earth images for in- Many geological, geomorphological and landscape features are ob-
formation extraction stands out as a popular use case. The popularity of servable and measurable on Google Earth, for example gullies (Frankl
this use case is reflected in the journal ranking: 4 of the top-10 journals et al., 2013), salt marshes (Goudie, 2013), chevrons (Scheffers et al.,
are remote sensing-centered journals. The four remote sensing journals, 2008), stratigraphic unconformities (Benker et al., 2011), sandy bea-
Remote Sensing, Remote Sensing of Environment, International Journal ches (Berry et al., 2014), meadows (Crego et al., 2014), river networks
of Remote Sensing and IEEE J-STARS, contributed 58 articles out of the (Large and Gilvear, 2015). The GIS tools in Google Earth allow geo-
total 136 in the top-10 journals. graphers to collect observational data about geography, geology and
In urban areas, however, many socioeconomic and microenviron- geomorphology by delineating and measuring features on the high-re-
mental aspects cannot be fully captured from space. For example, sa- solution images (Fig. 6), and these observational data can serve as
tellite images may not be very helpful in answering questions like “how training or ground truth samples (Thenkabail et al., 2009; Madugundu
is the walkability of a neighbourhood?” or “which streets in a city are et al., 2014; Landmann and Dubovyk, 2014; Wang et al., 2015) for
most suitable for bike tours?” To accommodate such needs, Google remote sensing applications.
Earth has made available street to building-level data acquired using Mashing-up different spatial data sources on Google Earth is an easy
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography, street vehicle photo- approach to perform geovisual analysis. For example, as geology is the
graphy and crowd-sourcing. These datasets mainly include 3D city combined work of lithology, tectonic, geomorphological, edaphic, hy-
models, street panoramas and geotagged photographs. Google Earth drological, and topographical processes, overlaying geological maps
itself also serves as a crowd-sourcing hub for gathering and sharing upon the terrain layer on Google Earth can effectively help understand
geotagged pictures with text label and comment. In the early stages, 3D the geodiversity underlying the surface (Martínez-Graña et al., 2015).
buildings on Google Earth were mainly landmarks created using Visual analytics on virtual globe is an intuitive approach to understand
Computer Aided Design (CAD). With the development of UAV-based and evaluate human activities, geo-processes and their interrelations.
photogrammetry and image-based 3D reconstruction technologies, The potential of Google Earth as a geovisual analytics tool has been
Google started to mass produce 3D city models that cover the entire demonstrated in a plethora of applications, for example, assessment of
landscape of a city (Liang et al., 2017). The Google Street View effort volcanic hazards to aviation (Williams and Thomas, 2011), spatial
was launched in 1997, and since then panoramic photographs along characterization of the population at risk of cholangiocarcinoma
navigable streets are being continuously gathered and regularly up- (Kaewpitoon et al., 2016), research of disease distribution (Marek et al.,
dated. Google Street View panoramas were mainly used in built en- 2015), investigation of flood inundation (Madadi et al., 2015), extrac-
vironment auditing (Bethlehem et al., 2014; Daniello et al., 2013; tion of sidewalk distances (Janssen and Rosu, 2012), evaluation of
Clarke et al., 2010) with respect to social dimensions (Kim and Clarke, weather station sites (Strangeways, 2009).
2015; Bentley et al., 2016; Chudyk et al., 2014). As Sheppard and Cizek
(2009) said, “the virtual globe type of visualisation crosses several key 3.4. Provision of an extensible data-sharing and visualization framework
thresholds in communicating scientific and environmental information,
taking it well beyond the realm of conventional spatial data and geo- With the OGC standardization of KML, Google Earth was augmented
graphic information science, and engaging more complex dimensions of into an extensible data-sharing and visualization framework (Fig. 7).
human perception and aesthetic preference”. KML accommodates a wide variety of spatial data types including pic-
tures, images, videos, placemarks, shapes, 3D models. KML can be used
3.3. Provision of GIS functionality to render camera and object animations on Google Earth. Contents
created or modified in Google Earth can be exported to share with other
Google Earth provides only basic GIS functions such as multisource users. KML supports streaming and visualization of data with a LOD
data import/export, overlay, measuring, labelling and query. These are, structure. Additionally, KML files can be published on servers by con-
to some extent, the simplest of GIS functions, designed to help gather tent developers using a special data type call “network link”, which
raw data and acquire intuitive knowledge from Google Earth’s multi- encapsulates a HTTP URL pointing to a server-side content location.
source datasets such as satellite imagery, DEM, 3D city models and With network links, KML can be used to publish and visualize massive
places. Analytical GIS functions such as spatial statistics are not avail- spatial contents like 3D city models. The extensibility of KML has made
able in Google Earth as they may not be affordable in the virtual globe Google Earth into a mighty tool for visualizing and simulating complex
environment. The readily available labelling and measuring tools spatiotemporal processes and phenomena.
(Fig. 6) in Google Earth can be used to create placemarks, geotag The extensible functionality of KML has proven very helpful for
photos, draw lines, delineate polygons, and measure length, height and visualizing complex structures and dynamic processes in geoscience, as
area of terrain features and buildings, which can then be exported in the well as for data sharing (Sun et al., 2012 ). In a special issue (Virtual
KML format for exchange. They provide facilitation for research activ- Globes in Science) with 11 articles published in Computers & Geos-
ities like ground-truth data gathering, geographic feature extraction ciences, 7 articles were centered around the utilization of KML for
and land survey. Analytical functions for deriving high-level informa- geovisualization (Smith and Lakshmanan, 2011; Webley, 2011; Chien
tion are neither available in Google Earth nor are they routinely im- et al., 2011; Postpischl et al., 2011; Ballagh et al., 2011; Chiang et al.,
plemented in other virtual globes. A possible reason for the lack of 2011; Tomaszewski, 2011; Heavner et al., 2011). 3D Visualization of
analytical functions in virtual globes is sacrifice of interoperability for large-scale time-varying geo-scientific data and geo-processes is chal-
visualization efficiency. To achieve real-time visualization at the pla- lenging for scientists. KML’s structured, yet flexible format and Google
netary scale, geographic data displayed on a virtual globe client are Earth’s robustness greatly eases the process of geovisualization. KML
usually present in the format of pre-processed level-of-detail (LOD) has been widely used to visualize geospatial data and time-varying geo-
97
Fig. 6. Utilization of simple GIS functions in Google Earth: screen digitization and measuring.
Table 4
Examples of using Google Earth as a GIS tool.
Use case Examples
Data collection Park quality assessment in Australia (Taylor et al., 2011); Measurement of transport distances in Amazon (Webster et al., 2016);
Delineation of rock glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region (Schmid et al., 2015); Building height estimation (Qi et al.,
2016); counting of residential plots in Adenta, Ghana (Poku-Boansi and Adarkwa, 2016)
Validation/ground truthing for remote sensing Land use/land cover mapping in Dirab region, Saudi Arabia (Madugundu et al., 2014); vegetation mapping in East Africa
(Landmann and Dubovyk, 2014); global irrigated area mapping (Thenkabail et al., 2009); global land-cover mapping (Zhao
et al., 2014); rice paddy mapping (Wang et al., 2015)
Data integration/interoperability and mashups Space-time analysis (Curtis et al., 2015); visualization of heat maps (Polczynski and Polczynski, 2014); visualization of genetic
data (Tsai, 2011); virtual tour of geological heritage (Martínez-Graña et al., 2015)
processes such as outcrops (Tavani et al., 2014; McCaffrey et al., 2008), social and environmental phenomena remains almost entirely un-
paleomagnetic fields (Mochales and Blenkinsop, 2014), spatiotemporal realized in Google Earth, it has been used as a supporting tool in
distribution of seismicity (Agnew, 2009), geological features modelling and simulation of physical processes, for example in hydro-
(Blenkinsop, 2012; Zhu et al., 2016a, 2016b, 2016c; Roberts, 2008; logical modeling (Chien and Tan, 2011) and radio wave simulation
Hennessy and Feely, 2008), seismic tomographic models (Yamagishi (Yun et al., 2007).
et al., 2010), research vessel navigation data (Yamagishi et al., 2009),
flight tracks (Tang et al., 2012), dynamics of postglacial rebound
3.5. Provision of an extensible development framework
(Hanyk et al., 2008), touring of geological heritage (Martínez-Graña
et al., 2014), volcanic gas plumes (Wright et al., 2009), atmospheric
Google Earth API allowed Google Earth applications developed in
profiles (Chen et al., 2009), climate data (Sun et al., 2012). These ex-
amples were grouped into five use cases in Table 5. Moreover, it has JavaScript to be embedded into web browsers with plugin support
(Fig. 8). Functions available in the official Google Earth release, such as
also proved effective in supporting complex geovisual analytics (Chen
et al., 2010) and knowledge dissemination (De Paor et al., 2012). data loading, navigation and layer management, were exposed via the
API. This means standalone Google Earth instances could be fully in-
With these extensible visualization and data-sharing capabilities,
Google Earth can be conveniently used for dissemination and commu- tegrated into a business workflow through custom development. Google
nication of geospatial data, as demonstrated by the examples from Earth API unleashed the potential of Google Earth to serve business-
different fields including geology/geomorphology (Martínez-Graña level applications which even the powerful extensibility of KML could
et al., 2014; Saito and Yoshida, 2009), atmospheric/climatic research not accommodate (De Paor and Whitmeyer, 2011). Google Earth API
(Sun et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2013), hydrology (Barker et al., 2007). was extensively used by government agencies, education institutions,
Although fully integrated modelling and simulation of simulation of individual developers, academic researchers, non-profit organizations
and private-sector businesses for purposes such as decision support
98
Fig. 7. Use of KML for data dissemination and communication (http://www.opengeospatial.org).
Table 5
Examples of visualizing and exploring time-varying/3D data using the KML extensions.
Use case Examples
Geological/geomorphological Structural geology (Blenkinsop, 2012); paleomagnetic data (Mochales and Blenkinsop, 2014); seismic tomographic models (Postpischl
et al., 2011); virtual outcrop (Tavani et al., 2014); seismic tomographic models (Yamagishi et al., 2010); geochemical data (Yamagishi
et al., 2011); Tonga Trench and Samoa Archipelago models (De Paor et al., 2012); marble outcrops (McCaffrey et al., 2008); Earth's
lithosphere (Zhu et al., 2016a, 2016b, 2016c); granite batholith (Hennessy and Feely, 2008); 3D seismicity (Agnew, 2009); postglacial
rebound (Hanyk et al., 2008)
Atmospheric/climatic Heterogeneous climate data (Sun et al., 2012); volcanic gas plumes (Wright et al., 2009); air quality remote sensing data (Prados et al.,
2010); microscale meteorology model output (Wang et al., 2013); meteorological phenomena (Choi and Whangbo, 2016); atmospheric
and aqueous contaminants (Bell et al., 2015)
Hydrological Hydrodynamic modelling (Chien and Tan, 2011); water quality data (Barker et al., 2007)
Biological/ecological/environmental Phylogeography of rabies virus (Carnieli et al., 2011); phylogenetic trees (Hill and Guralnick, 2010); red tides (Hu et al., 2016); microbial
marine biodiscovery (Mukherjee, Llewellyn, and Evans-Illidge, 2008); phylogenies (Bielejec et al., 2016)
Facilities/equipment/moving objects A-Train vertical profiles (Chen et al., 2009); research vessel navigation data (Yamagishi et al., 2009); GNSS wave trajectories (Roussel
et al., 2014); radio wave propagation simulations (Yun et al., 2007); A-Train Tracks and remote sensing data (Chen et al., 2010); 3D flight
tracks and flight simulations (Tang et al., 2012); marine sensing networks (Schneider and Schmidt, 2010); pedestrian trajectory data (Qi
and Du, 2013); traffic state estimation (Box et al., 2014)
(Sharma et al., 2013), interactive information processing (Clark and See et al., 2015), spatiotemporal visual analysis (Yu et al., 2016a,
Aide, 2011; Yu et al., 2016a, 2016b), visualization of model outputs 2016b; Compieta et al., 2007; Bertolotto et al., 2007), data dis-
(Wang et al., 2013), data dissemination, crowd-sourcing (Fritz et al., semination (Smith et al., 2014; Zhu et al., 2016c) and decision support
2009; Boulos et al., 2011a, 2011b; See et al., 2015), and promotion of systems (Sharma, Naidu, and Sargaonkar, 2013). The potential of
public participation (Yiakoumettis et al., 2010). Google Earth API for supporting crowdsourcing was well demonstrated
Although the official Goole Earth JavaScript API was used in most by Geo-Wiki, an online platform designed for validating and improving
cases, there were other cases in which Goole Earth was integrated using global land cover data (Fritz et al., 2009), which requires a high-level of
the Microft COM/ActiveX mechanism based on development languages support for collaboration, interaction and cannot be achieved with the
such as C#, VB.NET and MatLab (Table 6). official Google Earth release. Google Earth API allowed the integration
With Google Earth API, the Google Earth functionalities can be of specialized user developed data mining algorithms to be interactively
tightly integrated to serve more complex applications, as exemplified tested on Google Earth (Compieta et al., 2007; Bertolotto et al., 2007).
by the use of Google Earth API in the development of crowdsourcing Google Earth API also opened the possibility for spatial databases to be
data collection (Fritz et al., 2009; Fritz et al., 2013; Comber et al., 2013; tightly coupled with Google Earth in data dissemination (Smith et al.,
99
Fig. 8. A Google Earth API-based web application developed by NASA JPL (tropicalcyclone.jpl.nasa.gov) for dissemination of tropical cyclone information.
2014) and decision support systems (Sharma et al., 2013). fields could not only draw interest from a wider academic audience, but
Since the termination of Google Earth API service, Google Earth API inspire both retrospective and prospective thoughts on the paradigms
developers have been seeking alternative solutions to migrate their and roles of Digital Earth. While Google Earth has been cited in a wide
applications. A recently popular alternative solution is Cesium (Li and range of journal and conference publications, our discussion is focused
Wang, 2017; Wang et al., 2017), which is a WebGL-based virtual globe on three broad areas with reference to the scope of this journal which
library. However, migration to open-source virtual globe libraries such encompasses remote sensing and GIS methods and their applications in
as Cesium and osgEarth (Liang et al., 2014) may require extensive geosciences and social sciences.
learning and development efforts.
4.1. Influence in remote sensing and GIS
4. Discussion
Remote sensing is the ensemble of theories, techniques and appli-
While the decadal development of Google Earth has been system- cations about obtaining geospatial information by observing from
atically reviewed, it is even more important to succinctly summarize above Earth’s surface. There have been considerable applications of
how Google Earth has been used in and influenced different research Google Earth in remote sensing as documented in the journals.
fields. A discussion of these aspects with regard to particular research Commercial high-resolution satellite imagery like QuickBird is sold by
Table 6
Examples of integrated application development using the Google Earth API.
Example Development language
Interactive control of subsurface views in exploration of geological and geophysical models (De Paor and Whitmeyer, 2011) Official JavaScript API
Web-based 3D visualization and dissemination of global crustal models (Zhu et al., 2016c) Official JavaScript API
An open-source tool for manual land conversion mapping (Jacobson et al., 2015) Official JavaScript API
A web-based, student-centered, educational tool for active learning and knowledge dissemination in Engineering Hydrology (Habib et al., 2012) Official JavaScript API
Web-based mapping of genetic principal component (PC) plots by integrating Google Maps/Google Earth with PC plot services (Torres-Sanchez et al., Official JavaScript API
2013)
Integrating Google Earth and the Pottery Informatics Query Database for dissemination of archaeological ceramic data (Smith et al., 2014) Official JavaScript API
A Google Earth-based virtual laboratory for structural geology exercise (De Paor et al., 2016a, 2016b) Official JavaScript API
A collaborative LULC reference data collection system based on visual interpretation of Google Earth imagery (Clark and Aide, 2011) Official JavaScript API
Using Geo-Wiki as a crowdsourcing platform for improving Global Land Cover data (Fritz et al., 2009; Fritz et al., 2013; Comber et al., 2013; See et al., Official JavaScript API
2015)
A prototype cyberinfrastructure for exploring 3D city models (Yiakoumettis et al., 2010) Official JavaScript API
Visual analysis of geological disasters based on DEM extracted from Google Earth (Yu et al., 2016a, 2016b) C#/COM
Satellite camera imaging simulation based on Google Earth (Klancar et al., 2012) Matlab/ActiveX
A Google Earth-based framework for exploratory spatio-temporal data mining and visual analysis (Bertolotto et al., 2007; Compieta et al., 2007) C#/COM
Integrating Google Earth with a surface water quality decision support system (Sharma et al., 2013) VB.Net/COM
100
the square kilometer at high prices which individual consumers cannot 4.2. Influence in geosciences
normally afford. Google partnered with satellite data companies such as
DigitalGlobe to make these imagery data freely available on Google Geosciences embrace a wide range of Earth science disciplines about
Earth. Although images grabbed from Google Earth need to be or- geography, geology, geophysics, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and bio-
thorectified and then stitched back together, they have been routinely sphere. The utilities of Google Earth for geoscience research can be
used to extract Earth surface information both by supervised classifi- broadly classified into three categories: information extraction, visual
cation and by visual interpretation. This open data policy even made it analytics, and data visualization and sharing. The global topographic
possible for high-resolution images to be used in small-scale research model and satellite imagery on Google Earth offer geoscientists a low-
projects and experiments which were underfunded or even nonfunded. cost solution to obtain information about geology, geomorphology,
Another important role that Google Earth has been playing in the field ecology, hydrology and human geography at scales from planetary
of remote sensing is supplying validation (Zhao et al., 2016a, 2016b, down to sub-meter. Google Earth’s KML and API functionality greatly
2016c, 2016d, 2014; Potere et al., 2009), ground-truth (Tehrany, facilitates visualization and sharing of Earth science data such as ima-
Pradhan, and Jebuv, 2014) and training data (Schneider, 2012; Gong gery, topography, geology models, urban models, field pictures, climate
et al., 2013; Kobayashi et al., 2016) in support of land use/land cover data and hydrology data. In the meantime, Google Earth serves as a
classification using moderate-resolution satellite imagery such as planetary-scale visual analytics tool to assist interpretation of Earth
Landsat. science data and geospatial knowledge discovery.
In terms of taxonomy and dependency, Google Earth relates most With Google Earth, one can learn about geoscience knowledge
directly to Digital Earth and GIScience. Google Earth epitomized the simply by making virtual field trips on the virtual globe. Google Earth
early ideas of Gore and subsequent conceptual models of Digital Earth. has not only been used in high-school science education (Gold et al.,
To many most non-expert users, Google Earth is almost a synonym for 2015; Kulo and Bodzin, 2013), but to teach advanced geoscience con-
Digital Earth, as it has been the most convenient channel through which cepts, such as palaeo-bank (Treves et al., 2015) and fold structure (De
the concepts of Digital Earth are disseminated to the public. As a pio- Paor et al., 2016a, 2016b). Scientists, curriculum developers and
neering tool for practicing Neogeopgraphy, Google Earth has en- classroom educators can be brought together to exploit the use of au-
couraged non-academic users to create and leverage geospatial data thentic scientific data for school education (Gold et al., 2015). Research
(Byrne and Pickard, 2016). Interestingly, the popularization of Google papers that promoted pedagogical techniques using Google Earth were
Earth is seemingly attributable more to the combination of a user- most concentrated in Journal of Geoscience Education and Journal of
centered design, a good business model and high-quality user experi- Geography. There has been 15 articles discussing the use of Google
ence than to actual technological innovations, since technically each Earth in teaching classes from elementary school science to college
and every component and function of Google Earth can be re-im- geology programs (Monet and Greene, 2012; De Paor et al., 2016a;
plemented independently. Equipped with the “mash-up” capability, Giorgis, 2015; Krakowka, 2012; Schultz et al., 2008; Patterson, 2007;
even amateurs can easily superimpose geographic information from Zhu et al., 2016b) published in the two journals alone. Google Earth is
sources distributed over the Web (Goodchild, 2007). Traditionally, a more than a virtual field trip environment (Krakowka, 2012), Patterson
majority of GIS applications were developed for and used by an ex- (2007) exemplified that it can serve as a classroom for learning spatial
clusive expert community. Going against the common wisdom, the patterns and spatial thinking. It has been statistically shown that there
massive geospatial data on Google Earth was made freely and easily was a correlation between the introduction of Google Earth map in-
available to everyone from the beginning. This data sharing model has terpretation exercises and improved student visual penetrative thinking
contributed to the popularization and “democratization of GIS” (Butler, ability (Giorgis, 2015).
2006; Goodchild, 2007) in the last decade. Besides, Google Earth also
serves as a crowd-sourcing platform to attract volunteered geographic 4.3. Influence in social sciences
information from citizens (Goodchild, 2009; Comber et al., 2013).
The popularity of Google Earth in comparison with other virtual Application of Google Earth in social sciences has particularly been
globes, particularly with NASA World Wind, may relate to their func- active in archaeology and human geography. Google Earth has arguably
tional differences. We are able to see a number of functional differences revolutionized archaeology by allowing everyone including profes-
between Google Earth and NASA World Wind: firstly, Google Earth sional and amateur archaeologists to make spectacular finds around the
provides easy access to high-resolution imagery and a greater variety of globe. Google Earth’s information has been extensively used to identify
background information which were not available in NASA World and survey archaeological sites, for example, the pre-colonial stone-
Wind; secondly, Google Earth’s KML extensions better facilitate data walled structures in South Africa (Sadr and Rodier, 2012), the moated
integration, visualization of time-varying and 3D data, and data dis- settlements of the Iron Age in Thailand (O'Reilly and Scott, 2015) and
semination. Although NASA World Wind is a fully open-source API, it Hafit tombs in Oman (Deadman and Al-Jahwari, 2016). However, the
does not have a standardized data scripting language with the ease-of- downside is that undiscovered archaeological sites may become more
use comparable to KML; finally, Google Earth’s data sharing and vulnerable to looting. Interestingly, Google Earth was even used to
crowdsourcing mechanisms better encourage public participation. By study about archaeological looting patterns (Lasaponara et al., 2014;
comparison, NASA World Wind’s user community is limited to re- Tapete et al., 2016; Contreras and Brodie, 2010). In human geography
searchers and scholars. These factors are worth considering in future and social science research, Google Earth facilitates not only acquisition
development of virtual globes. of information about the physical environment, but linking human di-
As a democratized GIS, Google Earth’s easy visualization and ana- mensions with the physical environment. It has been commonly used by
lysis functions are open to everyone from GIS professionals to “ten-year- social scientists to explore relationships between human dimensions
old children” for conducting online analysis and data collection. Google and environmental factors in an abundance of applications (Curtis
Earth serves not only as a scalable geovisual analytics tool for exploring et al., 2006; Cinnamon and Schuurman, 2010; Galway et al., 2012).
massive geospatial datasets, but as a virtual geographic environment
(Lin et al., 2013) for geographers, geoscientist, biologist and even social 5. Conclusions
scientists to collect field information. The field information available on
Google Earth, however, remains very limited in terms of variety, We have retrospectively reviewed the applications and impacts of
comprehensiveness and timeliness, as it mainly covers the textural and Google Earth over the past decade. We first conducted a bibliometric
geometric properties of Earth’s surface. analysis with data retrieved from Scopus. Then, we categorized and
ranked Google Earth’s functions with reference to their respective
101
contribution and importance. Finally, we discussed the applications Disclosure statement

associated with each function and the implications for various research
areas. The following conclusions were drawn: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
(1) The impact of Google Earth has been profound and persistent Funding
during the past decade. Google Earth was mentioned in an average
of 229 publications per year since 2009. The frequency that Google This research was supported by the National Key Research and
Earth appeared in the literature has not shown any significant Development Program of China [Grant Number: 2017YFB0503602].
changes since 2009. This implies Google Earth continues to be a
popular virtual globe tool. Appendix A. Supplementary material
(2) The impact of Google Earth has touched upon most scientific dis-
ciplines at a broad level. During 2006–2016, Google Earth was Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the
mentioned in 2115 publications covering all of Scopus’s 26 subject online version, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.08.019.
areas.
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ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 146 (2018) 91–107

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

Applications and impacts of Google Earth: A decadal review (2006–2016) T

Fig. 1. Visualization of multisource geospatial data on Google Earth.

Fig. 3. Ranking of countries by contribution of publications mentioning Google Earth.

Fig. 5. Ranking of journals by number of publications mentioning Google Earth.

Table 1 eﬃcient server. Ellipsoid tessellation and scalable visualization of

Fig. 7. Use of KML for data dissemination and communication (http://www.opengeospatial.org).

contribution and importance. Finally, we discussed the applications Disclosure statement

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