The technology processes remote-sensing data, including data from the LANDSAT and RADAR satellites, in combination with groundtruthdata provided by a ground penetrating radar and other information drawn from geological, hydrogeological, geographical, hydrological and climate data and, when dealing with deep aquifers, seismological data.
Since 2008, the firm's GroundTruth project has mashed together licensed data with information gathered by its own fleet of Street View cars and bicycles.
The Mountain View, California has also driven more than 5 million unique miles as part of its five-year quest (called project GroundTruth) to build more accurate maps from its own raw data rather than licensing map content from others, said Brian McClendon, head of Google maps.