The C.I.A. and Pentagon have spent billions on new collection hardware, spy satellites with real-time imagery of the globe.
Ikonos provides near real-time imagery (it passes over a given spot every three days) with a resolution of 0.82 metres meaning that the smallest feature it can distinguish is 0.82 metres across.
If Google's system can be expanded to cover forests globally and access near real-time imagery, it can potentially be a powerful tool that helps tropical countries monitor forest loss".
Commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have raved about the agency's ability to deliver real-time imagery to troops in the field, including three-dimensional building-by-building maps of Baghdad.
Documentaries like the British "Detroit, Ruin of a City" and "Requiem for Detroit?" and the French "Detroit Ville Sauvage" ("Detroit Wild City") emphasize lurid end-times imagery and wallow in the symbolism of the factories that helped win World War II and build the middle class being swallowed whole by nature.
Real-time imagery delivered by drones could be another possible addition to future MapBox-powered maps.
Each aircraft can stay aloft for up to 17 hours at a time, loitering over an area and sending back real-time imagery of activities on the ground.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are capable of providing high resolution, near real-time imagery often with less expense than manned aerial or spaceborne platforms.
The real-time imagery requirement (vi) permits modifications of on-going missions to map areas of specific interest as they are detected.
A satellite captures real-time imagery of Sudan, enabling a team of analysts to monitor troop movements, bombings and other aggressive activities by al-Bashir in the disputed border areas between Sudan and newly formed South Sudan.
The UAV maker, which was reportedly also being courted by Facebook around the same time, also had the potential to deliver high quality, real-time imagery to Google Maps and assist with disaster relief, the company said at the time.
