Google's pre-Katrina New Orleans map data under fire

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 2 Apr 2007 at 10:44

Google is being called to account over its use of pre-Hurricane Katrina images of New Orleans on its map portal maps.google.com. In America, a congressional subcommittee, has decried the return to old images as a 'great injustice' to those who suffered from the storms, and Google is accused of 'airbrushing history'.

Images of flattened real estate and devastation have been replaced by older pictures of an unscathed city.

The attack has neen made by The House Committee on Science and Technology subcommittee chairman Brad Miller, reports the Associated Press in a widely-carried article.

Note, however, that Google's more specialised map offering, Google Earth, does carry post-Katrina images portraying how the city was wrecked by the 2005 hurricane.

'The latest update from one of our information providers substantially improved the imagery detail of the New Orleans area,' said Google's director for maps and satellite imagery, John Hanke, who stated that 'a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution, and clarity' determine what imagery is used.

A Google spokesperson also said that the company was trying to use more current imagery.

The committee has asked Google to respond by 6 April, detailing who made the decision to replace the images and disclosing if any public body, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had contacted the company to request the change.

Suspicions have been sparked of a conspiracy to present New Orlean's recovery as progressing better than it really is - that civic leaders may have put pressure on the search giant to change its images.

'To use older, pre-Katrina imagery when more recent images are available without some explanation as to why appears to be fundamentally dishonest,' Miller is reported as saying.

Hurricane Katrina - described as the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded - struck the US on 29 August 2005.