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Maybe I’m way behind most of you in discovering the extent of this….but I have relied on G.Earth to fill in some reality and even to draft details of sites into base sheets, but it was usually on fairly small parcels. Recently I ran into a situation where I had some GIS resources to rely on in creating a base sheet for a larger than usual property. However, the GIS source was intended more as a campus-type map and couldn’t offer much in the way of realistic parking lot outlines. This new base sheet had to be at a larger scale but was not needed for great accuracy itself, just as more of a location guide for landscape features to be added. So the expense of getting a real survey wasn’t justified. Still, I wanted it to be fairly realistic so I drafted what I could from Google images at the chose scale for use over the GIS (probably USGS) topo, referring to pond locations and highway lines to get them to “register” with each other.
This worked about as well as needed but towards the bottom of the sheet I couldn’t resolve a discrepancy and faced deciding between the aerials and GIS sources. I finally decided in favor of the GIS although part of me felt like the camera couldn’t be that wrong. Well, it turns out that yes it can be. I’m not sure I understand all the terms and processes in this discussion between geographers, but I’m passing it along.
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/positional-accuracy-in-google-maps-my-maps-vs-google-earth
My client is happy enough. But in moving past the “vicinity map” level into a “master reference map” or other use, it just seems like the best idea would be instead of showing fixed scale, to say something like “Information drawn from several sources and scale is approximate,” or similar wording, in case somebody tries to re-use it.
That is a great condition of use statement. Unfortunately when I tried the NOAA, their photo had even more leafed out forest and I couldn’t see as much of the pavement edges as from google, bing, etc. Fortunately, topo was good enough from their GIS to go ahead. I just somehow thought that those aerial sources would had “stiched” overlapping photo coverage in a way that compensated for any warp around the edges from center of camera (my primitive way of expressing it) but wanted to warn others it’s not so great. You can tell that buildings are sort of “leaning,” but I guess I thought surfaces wouldn’t be distorted noticibly.
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