Google Earth has kicked off a new program known as “Google Earth Outreach”, which now shows close-up views of United Nations refugee camps and aid projects in order to help UN show the plight of refugees, and feature programs to help them. The program was unveiled on Tuesday jointly with UN Officials at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Google Earth Outreach program went live on Tuesday. To start out, they will be focusing on three key areas – Darfur, Columbia, and Iraq. The plan is to expand the program to include areas all around the world.
In order to fully demonstrate what refugees go through and deal with on a daily basis, UN workers will even be able to add video interviews of refugees, photos, and educational text.
Google Earth, which now has over 350 million users worldwide, is a unique combination of satellite imagery, terrain, maps, and even 3-D buildings which allows users to pull up precise, detailed geographic images from locations around the world. Launched in 2005, Google Earth has been slowly adding innovative new uses for their software, such as this UN program.
