In a rapidly evolving world, the Google Maps Platform equips businesses, developers, and public institutions with powerful tools to stay ahead. It empowers the creation of innovative applications and solutions grounded in up-to-date, accurate, and globally comprehensive data. With access to insights on over 250 million places and Street View imagery spanning more than 110 countries, you can make smarter decisions and develop products that make a real difference in people’s lives.
Recently, Google Maps Platform has been enriched with features combining advanced analytics, generative artificial intelligence, and environmental data.
Details below – enjoy the read!
A New Era of Geospatial Analysis with Google Maps Platform, Google Earth Engine, and BigQuery
Google is opening access to new datasets through various channels, including Google BigQuery, and integrating with Google Earth Engine. This makes it easier to tap into accurate, real-time, and global geospatial data. It also opens the door to more advanced analytics. As a result, organizations can make smarter business decisions—including those that take environmental factors into account.
Places Insights (available in Preview)
Places Insights provides aggregated data on various Points of Interest (POIs) on the map. Using this feature, you can find out which types of businesses dominate in a given area.
This can be especially useful if you’re looking to expand your business and are searching for a new location. Places Insights helps you analyze candidate locations based on specific criteria such as business type, customer ratings, opening hours, parking availability, or accessibility for people with disabilities.
Let’s say you want to open a store and are looking for a location near many restaurants but few large competitors. Google’s solution will help you find a location that fits those requirements.
Places Insights is available only to registered users. Want to try it out? Contact us, and we’ll quickly walk you through the registration process!
Heatmap showing restaurant density in Manhattan
Roads Management Insights
Roads Management Insights provides historical and real-time data on traffic conditions.
This empowers institutions responsible for road and public transport management to analyze traffic patterns more effectively. They can identify when and where traffic jams occur and which locations are particularly prone to accidents. It also enables them to evaluate the impact of implemented changes. For example, they can assess whether new traffic signals or speed limits are improving traffic flow. They can also determine if these measures are enhancing safety and increasing comfort for drivers, public transport users, and pedestrians.
Earth Engine in BigQuery (available in Preview)
This solution grants users access to satellite data and tools to analyze it.
Even without expertise in remote sensing, you can, for example, analyze wildfire or deforestation risks. You can also calculate vegetation indices and track environmental changes.
Google recently enabled the integration of Google Earth Engine with BigQuery. This means you can now combine satellite imagery data with other datasets to produce even more advanced geospatial analyses.
Imagery Insights (available in Experimental)
This solution enables the analysis of Street View imagery using Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s platform for building and managing machine learning models. Imagery Insights helps detect and evaluate the condition of infrastructure elements such as utility poles, road signs, bridges, and pavement. Infrastructure management companies can leverage these insights to more easily identify assets that require maintenance or replacement.
Google Weather API, a New Addition to the “Environment” Product Family
In 2023, Google introduced a set of Environment products delivering environmental data. Now, in addition to the well-known Air Quality API, Solar API, and Pollen API, the company is launching a new solution – the Weather API, currently available in Preview.
The Google Weather API delivers essential weather information. You can use it to build your own solutions (e.g., weather portals) or improve existing ones. The data provided can also support decision-making in weather-sensitive areas, from planning trips to responding to extreme weather events like storms or heavy rainfall.
Using the Weather API, you can query for local weather conditions and receive real-time detailed data on:
- temperature and “feels-like” temperature
- precipitation type (snow, rain, hail, etc.) and intensity
- humidity and air pressure
- UV index
- visibility
- cloud cover
- sunrise and sunset times, as well as moon phases
The Weather API provides:
Real-time weather conditions
Hourly forecasts up to 240 hours ahead
Daily forecasts up to 10 days ahead with all weather indicators
Historical weather conditions for the past 24 hours
More Reliable AI Outputs Thanks to Google Maps
Companies building AI agents like chatbots or virtual assistants increasingly face a challenge – these agents often provide unreliable and imprecise location-related data.
To address this, Google introduced the ability to use Google Maps data within AI models (Gemini models) and for grounding AI agents based on Vertex AI.
This allows AI solutions to enhance their responses with verified location information, such as:
- place names (restaurants, shops, gas stations)
- opening hours
- traffic conditions
- other spatial data
Users of such AI agents and chatbots receive accurate and current data.
At present, the use of Google Maps data in Vertex AI-built solutions is available only in the U.S. We hope it will become accessible in other regions soon!
Want to test the latest capabilities in geospatial analytics or build AI solutions supported by Google tools? Or maybe you’re interested in using the Weather API’s weather data? Contact us! We’d be happy to help. 😊