Thursday, September 6, 2012

Street View to the Rescue?


As noted by several recent posts on this blog, this summer Google's Street View project has been engaged in a number of innovative efforts to document places that are outside the realm of the original street focused concept. Notable among them have been excursions to the South Pole and other locations in Antarctica, and Google Trike rides through at least one town in the northern Canadian Arctic (2:38 video).  However, as interesting as these efforts may be, perhaps even more interesting has been the Street View transition from some type of mechanical locomotion, to only that provided by the human foot.  Watch below (31 seconds):





Comment: From an emergency response perspective, it's hard to watch the above clip and not think about how, as the technology continues to mutate and shrink in size, the potential future in the Emergency Services Sector (ESS) could be huge. Urban Search and Rescue support and documentation of disaster impacts are just two of the ideas that come to mind. So thanks again go out to Google for developing something that has utility in ways other than how it was originally intended.   


Lead photo credit: Chris Wattie/Reuters

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