VIEWS™ System Integrated with Google Earth

Visit the areas documented by MCEER's reconnaissance team along the Gulf coast, from Pascagoula, MS to Waveland, MS, and in New Orleans, Louisiana.

MCEER's reconnaissance team used the VIEWS™ system, developed by ImageCat, Inc. to collect images along the Gulf coast shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck, from September 6-11, 2005 and several weeks later in New Orleans from October 5-11, 2005. These images and their GPS coordinates have been integrated with Google Earth and are available for download as a complete system. Users can click on the individual GPS points to bring up video stills taken in the field.

The VIEWS/Google Earth combination for the first deployment to the Gulf Coast includes over 18,900 images (12.2 gb) and the second deployment to New Orleans includes over 27,000 images (15.3 gb).

There are several steps necessary in order to use this capability. First, Google Earth must be installed on your computer. Note that this is a broadband application with high memory requirements that are specified on Google's website. Next, the GPS route and the images captured by the VIEWS system need to be loaded. Follow the instructions below to obtain Google Earth, the deployment route and the geo-referenced images:

• Obtain Google Earth from the Google Earth download page; note system configuration requirements. Check that the program is working, by using a few features. For example, try to left click and drag to pan the map, or right click and drag to zoom, etc.
• Download VIEWS™ Data for the Gulf Coast Region and click "Open"
• Download VIEWS™ Data for New Orleans and click "Open"

Once the GPS route of the MCEER team has been loaded into the program, clicking on the red points will bring up a thumbnail of the image for that point. Clicking on the thumbnail image will load the full image in a browser window. Visit Tips for using Google Earth to learn more about its capabilities.

• Return to Preliminary VIEWS™ Reports

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