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How Google designed its wildfire feature for Maps
- etskinner 5y agoMeanwhile, Google shut down its crisis map earlier this year[1]. So now, instead of being able to go there to see if there was any information about a developing crisis, you have to first know what's going on so you know what to search, and only then will it show you some information. [1] https://9to5google.com/2021/02/17/google-crisis-map/ https://9to5google.com/2021/02/17/google-crisis-map/
- wodow 5y agohttps://www.crisiscleanup.org/map https://www.crisiscleanup.org/map is a kind-of alternative, based on private data. It lets you start from a list of recent natural disasters (in the US).
- lucb1e 5y agoTangentially related: there is also a loosely organised team helping to map crisis areas for getting aid and charting where people live(d) that might need help. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team
- bsedlm 5y agoI highly doubt they shut it down, they probably just closed off public access
- jvvw 5y agoI remember going to a talk given by the developer of something similar (can't remember the name of the site, sorry, but was given at a university, so probably a charity or public sector project of some sort) and apparently there are lots of issues with making data about this type of thing publicly available because there are malevolent parties who will try and take advantage of information about such situations in certain ways. Think they said a lot more - the talk was a while ago, but it was an angle that I hadn't thought about and I recall they had to have a screening process for whom they made information available to. (Edit: this is the talk: http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?s=29&whichevent=3148 http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?s=29&whichevent...)
- notatoad 5y agoit seems like the only useful information conveyed on that view is somebody wondering where in the world there is a crisis that they can spectate on. a colour-coded map of where you can go in the world to find a problem seems like it's feeding an unhealthy way of consuming information. google maps does an excellent job of showing crisis information where it's relevant. if you don't know enough about a crisis to google it or find it on a map, it's probably not relavant to you.
- PeterCorless 5y agoThere does need to be a global crisis "weather map." I proposed such a solution back in the 2011-2012 timeframe. It needs to be a data-centric system similar to Wikipedia, and, in fact, could and should integrate with other open source, public and crowdsourced information systems like Wikipedia. Whether the maps are provided by Google Maps or Open Street Map or any other project should matter less than there should be a publicly discoverable way to find out how current and emergent crises will affect their lives.
- themacguffinman 5y agoThat's just called "the news". I don't see how having a dedicated, detailed crisis map adds to existing journalism for outside observers.
- PeterCorless 5y agoNo, "the news" is not the same as a sort of "digital twin" global crisis data model. There are attempts at trying to map the news. The Ukrainian crisis fostered the creation of the Live UA Maps project: https://liveuamap.com/ https://liveuamap.com/ Its coverage has since expanded to include Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon and beyond. But mapping "the news" is insufficient. You also have the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team: https://www.hotosm.org/ https://www.hotosm.org/ Because they sometimes need to create maps of places that have literally never been mapped before. For example, zoom in to Nigeria: https://www.hotosm.org/where-we-work/nigeria/ https://www.hotosm.org/where-we-work/nigeria/ There is a hell of a lot to make a global data model and map system work. And we're missing a hell of a lot pretending that "the news" will do it for us. Again, I foresee that this is the kind of work that needs a Wikipedia-level of involvement on a global scale. There are emergent elements of it, but we're not there yet.
- tholman 5y agoAll for extra tools to help in emergency situations, that said I would also like it if I could see street names without zooming to a microscopic level which could be helpful in these situations especially.
- lucasisola 5y agoLol. I was coming to the comments section for this. There must be some challenge here that isn't immediately obvious because I feel that no one has solved this well.
- rudian 5y agoI’m confident it’s two reasons: - too many street names make for a noisy/busy/ugly map, and we all know maps must be beautiful and nothing else - streets don’t pay for ads, businesses do, so between the two they prefer showing the latter. Technically now you can tap anywhere on the map once to place a pin and get more info; In practice tapping in Google Maps has become horrendous, it never does what you expect. One such example is tapping on a business near a “walkable area”: you can’t. The area will always focus instead, even if painted behind the business.
- squeaky-clean 5y agoApple Maps does this really well (at least for NYC). It's the only reason I keep it installed, to look at street names while using Google Maps
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bsedlm 5y ago> There must be some challenge here that isn't immediately obvious the challenge is profit maximization, this to emphasize it is not a technical challenge (earlier versions of maps were good at this)
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
- topkai22 5y agoI’ve been getting some sort of advocacy ads using wildfire maps on Google as an example of something that pending US legislation would take away. The details eluded (the ads may need work.) But I suspect this article is tied to that. campaign. Anyone know exactly what legislation Google is worried about?
- alisonkisk 5y agoToo many to count. https://www.google.com/search?q=google%20antitrust+law https://www.google.com/search?q=google%20antitrust+law
- jeffbee 5y agoThey're talking about the "Ending Platform Monopolies Act" popularly known (in my circles anyway) as the "Yelp Welfare Act". The bill would make it effectively impossible for Google to have any features that overlap with any conceivable competitors, so if for example there was some wildfire maps service, anywhere, no matter how obscure or useless, then Google Maps would have to give it equal billing over its own wildfire maps. This is because the Act makes it an illegal conflict of interest to own a platform and "exclude from, or disadvantage, the products, services, or lines of business on the covered platform of a competing business or a business that constitutes nascent or potential competition to the covered platform operator".
- jyu 5y agoIs there an alerts feature for this, similar to Ring neighbors?
- legitster 5y ago> Yossi Matias and others from his team immediately took action and within hours launched the first emergency OneBox on Google Search. It included emergency information and a hand-drawn map of the fire’s location, which was manually updated in collaboration with a local TV station throughout the fire’s 77-hour duration. I love this. Do the thing, and worry about doing it the right way later. You would not believe the amount of multimillion dollar products or features started out as a Excel spreadsheets being mailed back and forth and manually input to something.
- mulmen 5y agoIs this really the best policy with time and safety critical situations? Wildfire maps already exist, why not link to that? Who cares if you get it right eventually if you get it wrong when it matters?
- hrrsn 5y agoThe article heavily implies there was no such map for this incident available at the time.
- hnburnsy 5y agoThis is great but why is there not a weather radar layer in Google Maps? Is it because they don't want to compete with the plethora of weather apps?
- thedougd 5y agoAlways wondered the same. This feature would be amazing on Android Auto.
- jerlam 5y agoCan you describe why it would be useful in Android Auto? Google Maps seems quite car-centric to me, and most weather doesn't affect people who are traveling via automobile. Rain would not change my plans; but freeway closures would, and the latter is already present.
- macintux 5y agoFog, rain, sleet, ice, snow, tornadoes can all impact travel plans. Not often, admittedly, but I’ve changed my route based on most of those.
- dgaudet 5y agoFWIW the peakbagger app (android, ios) includes excellent fire and smoke layers. andrew has added these features over the past few years as fires have complicated the quest for peaks. caltopo.com is another great tool with fire layers, useful for planning hikes in affected areas.
- hparadiz 5y agoWould be nice if I could zoom out on the entire state of California and see at least a label showing where the fire is and not force me to zoom in to see it.
- bit_logic 5y agoThis is nice, but can Google do a better job covering the basics? Their weather widget used to display air quality (AQI) a few years ago (2018), then it suddenly disappeared one day: https://9to5google.com/2018/11/11/google-weather-missing-air-quality/ https://9to5google.com/2018/11/11/google-weather-missing-air... It seems they care enough about wildfire data to make this big update for Maps, but can't do something this basic? Their headquarters is in one of the most affected regions in Caifornia by wildfires (they had an orange sky last year), and no one at Google headquarters thought that maybe showing AQI in the weather widget should be restored? (it's not even a new feature, just bring back the old AQI panel). What's the problem here, too simple for someone's promo-packet?
- yegle 5y agoLooks like this is returning at least on Google Home Hub/Max: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/google-nest-hub-aqi/ https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/google-nest-hub-aqi/ I've switched to use PurpleAir instead. It's likely the AQI on Google Home Hub/Max is also sourcing the data from PurpleAir. Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on anything this AQI related.
- zitterbewegung 5y agoOn iOS and iPadOS the weather app displays the information (you will have to scroll.down from the location).
- Angostura 5y agoAlso shows on Maps
- jlarocco 5y agoOkay. But https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/ https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/ has been around for years and gets its data directly from the firefighting teams working the fires.
- guerrilla 5y agoYeah, as someone who watches the California fires live, Google was very late to the game with this one and their maps aren't very detailed. There are dozens of good providers of MODIS and VIIRS maps with loads of additional features (like histories) that update immediately. Google's is the most bland and slow of them all.
- mike_d 5y agoThe feature was launched because of a wildfire in Israel. The US government does not track international fires.
- pkaye 5y agoBut Google still seem to have implement this feature for the US first probably because the satellite data was readily available. It may take more work to find similar data for the rest of the world.
- exabrial 5y agoI found this to be one of the most annoying features ever implemented in Google Maps. I was traveling across Colorado last summer and the persistent, annoying, inaccurate, irrelevant, and useless wildfire alerts made us switch to Apple maps, which has a whole slew of legit complaints and missing features. There wasn't a single scenario where this provided any value and only stood to make get vital information harder. To make things worse, like most things from Silicon Valley, there was no way to opt out, as ego reigns supreme.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoThey might have been useless to you, but I'd personally err on the side of enabling it by default in the affected areas. I've relied on it in the past for updated info about available escape routes during wildfire season. There's merit in adding a toggle, but map applications (including g maps) are already very settings-heavy. I'm sure some team is constantly trying to balance against configuration overload.
- mulmen 5y ago“Functions at the most basic level” seems like a low bar for making a feature opt-out.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoMy bar is that safety-relevant information should probably be enabled by default. Wildfire spread certainly qualifies. Here's two examples: During the 2020 fire season Google maps was helpful in tracking the fire spread until we eventually received evac orders via notification. Very useful. Contrast that with the experience before they had a well-developed crisis program. I had the misfortune to be in Nice for Bastille Day 2016. Google didn't promptly warn about the terrorist attack and I had to find out from FB / friends. There was a long period of utter confusion because I had personally disabled FB notifications and no one understood the situation or extent of danger.
- 5y ago
- andylynch 5y agoIt’s nice I’m sure but when I saw this appear while standing in the centre of town in the rain I wondered whether this is really the most useful layer option to add? (On a more constructive note in this part of the world flood warnings would generally be more useful. ) Even better once activated it glitches out if you’re not in California and asks you to zoom out until it’s on the map.