3301

Author

John Duncan and Bryan Boruff

Advanced GIS and Remote Sensing

Google Earth Engine Labs

These labs introduce Google Earth Engine as a tool for geospatial data analysis.

Sign Up

Sign up for Google Earth Engine here. Identify that you are using Google Earth Engine for educational purposes as part of the Advanced GIS and Remote Sensing undergraduate course at the University of Western Australia.


Google Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine is a platform for geospatial data analysis. It combines databases of big geospatial data that are updated daily, a range of geospatial data analysis and processing functions, and access to cloud computing resources to apply these functions to geospatial datasets.

You can access Google Earth Engine through the Code Editor - a web-based interactive development environment (IDE) for creating Google Earth Engine programs for geospatial data analysis and visualising the results in web maps, interactive charts, or text summaries.



Gorelick et al. (2017) provide a detailed description of the Google Earth Engine platform.

Applications

Applications of Google Earth Engine span a variety of disciplines which utilise geospatial data:

More examples of how Google Earth Engine is used can be found on the Google Earth Engine blog.

Useful Resources

There are a range user resources for Google Earth Engine. You should use these resources to supplement the work done in the labs. Becoming familiar with these resources will help you troubleshoot problems. Using these resources will develop your independent problem solving skills when undertaking geospatial data analysis.

  1. Google Earth Engine introduction - comprehensive overview of Google Earth Engine’s capabilities.
  2. Google Earth Engine tutorials - range of introductory and advanced tutorials on using Google Earth Engine for geospatial data analysis.
  3. Google Earth Engine for education - range of training resources.
  4. User Forum and help tab in the code editor (see below).


Google Earth Engine user forum and help tab


Attributions

Figures in these labs have been adapted from Wickham (2020) and Gimond (2019) with a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and the Google Earth Engine Guide and Young et al. (2017) with a CC BY 4.0 license.