Thursday, September 25, 2008

Flooding in the Kosi

The monsoon floods along the River Kosi continue to challenge the resources of the relief agencies in the Bihar region of India and in Nepal. To assist with the relief efforts, and to keep people around the world up to date, we have pulled together some mapping resources.

Fresh Imagery
German Aerospace Center (DLR) has published some maps and images of the flooded area, and these have been processed into KML image overlays for easy access by anyone. To view them in Google Earth, click here to download the KML file. This KML contains all flooding related images, and will be updated as more become available. To get the latest, simply right-click the folder in Google Earth and select "refresh".

The initial KML contains imagery provided by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) from the TerraSAR-X StripMap and ScanSAR data, acquired on 30th August and 1st September, 2008. It also contains imagery for Patna city provided by GeoEye from their Ikonos satellite, acquired on 11 September, 2008.

Maps and Other Resouces
The Google Map Maker team has been working with NGOs to update maps of the region. We encourage people who know the region or have current maps to help edit the online map at: mapmaker.google.com.

The Google India team has put together a resource page that links to some of the relief agencies working in the region.

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