Searching the planet just got a whole lot easier.
Global forecasting company Descartes Labs released a demo search engine that allows users to scan the entire globe to find specific types of objects. Want to know the location of every oil derrick on Philippines movie 18+earth? How about all the crop circles? Waterparks?
GeoVisual Search has you covered.
"Click anywhere on the map and we’ll scan the US, China, or the entire globe to find things that look similar," the company's announced reads. "Click on a baseball diamond, a wind turbine, or even a house with a moat and GeoVisual Search will find thousands of other matching objects."
Due to the varying resolution of satellite imagery in the company's data, searches within the U.S. are the most detailed, with China and the globe as a whole less so.
But why would anyone want to do this? Well, science, for one.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable "[Imagine] that you were trying to better understand renewable energy to make a policy recommendation to the United Nations," the company says, "you might want to pinpoint the location of every wind turbine and solar panel on the planet and watch how the number has grown and at what rate over the last ten years. The underlying infrastructure we’ve built for GeoVisual Search lays the foundation for exactly this type of technical analysis."
Pretty cool, right?
Even if energy policy isn't your thing, the visual nature of the GeoVisual Search makes it super fun to play around with. Who knows what kind of global patterns (conspiracies?) you might uncover while messing around at your desk.
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