Horizontal Accuracy Assessment of Google Earth Data Over Typical Regions of Asia

Abstract

Abstract. Google Earth provide the most accurate and available global high resolution imagery, covering nearly the entire land surface of the earth. However, the precision of Google Earth’s data has not been fully validated.The traditional ground measurement method is difficult to verify the horizontal precision of remote sensing over a large area. This paper focuses on typical regions of Asia, aiming to verify the precision of GE’s data based on purchased WorldView (WV) data by utilization of statistical analysis method.The results show that the highest precision has been estimated as 4.96–6.83 meters over the part of Japan, India and Kazakhstan, respectively. The lowest precision 16.53 and 16.59 meters primarily appear mountainous terrain, including the part of Israel and Syria.The result also presents the horizontal precision estimated in Japan, India and Kazakhstan, which is slightly higher than the precision estimated in Israel and Syria. The regions with larger deviation of relative errors have apparent influence on horizontal accuracy assessment of GE’s imagery. Accuracy assessment may be affected by terrain features and the insignificant feature points over the study area. The results suggest that the most of horizontal accuracy of GE’s high resolution imagery over the most of study regions fulfills precision requirement of 1:50000 maps.

Comment on “Soil salinity assessment by using near-infrared channel and Vegetation Soil Salinity Index derived from Landsat 8 OLI data: a case study in the Tra Vinh Province, Mekong Delta, Vietnam” by Kim-Anh Nguyen, Yuei-An Liou, Ha-Phuong Tran, Phi-Phung Hoang and Thanh-Hung Nguyen

“…The detection of the grid cells falling on water ponds or on emerged land was determined with a visual inspection method in QGIS using Google Earth satellite as base image. Google Earth is the most accurate highresolution virtual globe currently available and covers almost the entire land surface of the Earth (Yu and Gong 2012;Guo et al 2020). It integrates aerial photographs with medium to high spatial resolution satellite images mainly collected by WorldView-1/2/3, GeoEye-1, Airbus' Pleiades, QuickBird, Landsat and SPOT5.…”

“…The horizontal accuracy of Google Earth varies for different locations of the world and is strongly affected by topography, being lower on mountainous terrain and higher on plains. Several studies have shown that on plains and lowlands the absolute positioning accuracy generally varies between 0.1 and 5.0 m (Benker et al 2011;Paredes-Hernandez et al 2013;Goudarzi and Landry Jr 2017;Guo et al 2020). The disadvantage is that Google Earth is a collage of images collected very recently but in different periods, and some landuse changes may have occurred since 2017, when the L8 image used in this study was acquired.…”

Accuracy Assessment of Google Earth and Open-source Digital Elevation Models in China Using GPS on Field Control Points

“…The results show that the accuracy evaluation may be affected by the terrain features and unimportant feature points in the study area. (6) A DEM can also provide elevation information for a target; therefore, evaluating its accuracy is essential. Li et al selected five samples of typical terrain in China to evaluate the vertical accuracies of the AW3D30 and SRTM DEMs.…”

Yedi Kule - Monument Road Race: The Construction of the 3d Mapping Animation of the Old City of Thessaloniki, Greece

“…Google Earth Studio is one of the most popular Google Earth and virtual globe applications that offer most of the planet free access to high-resolution imagery. According to scientific indexes, Google Earth (GE) has been downloaded more than 1 billion times on desktop and mobile clients since the introduction of the Google Earth software in 2005 (Guo et al, 2020).…”