Recap of Geo for Good India Summit 2022
by Devaja Shah, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
In late 2022, we organized the Geo for Good India Summit to bring together our local community of changemakers, scientists, NGOs and academics in India. The event was a local edition of our annual Geo for Good Summit hosted in the US. We hosted two day-long events in Bangalore and Delhi, with breakouts and training sessions, product updates and most importantly community lightning talks and panel discussions.
The product talks featured a mix of India-specific announcements which included introductions to the latest products such as Dynamic World, Wildlife Insights, Environmental Insights Explorer along with feature updates to our most beloved tools like Google Earth, My Maps and Google Earth Engine such as new Earth Engine datasets, the ability to merge and re-import data layers in My Maps, display My Maps in Google Earth and more.
However, the most exciting part of the event was getting the community together in person after 3 long years! From our first ever Geo for Good Summit in India back in 2018, followed by the Earth Engine Advanced Summit in 2019, more than 40% of our attendees were returning alumni — people who attended our workshops or events in the past and have been using Google tools to create real-world social and environmental impact.
Below is a snapshot of our long-time community members Raj Bhagat (WRI India), Kishore Kowtham (Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, CMWSSB) and M D Madhusudan (NCBS) taking part in an engaging panel discussion on “Mapping for Advocacy and Policy Making”.
We also heard from new and old partners in our 5-min lightning talks featuring interesting projects such as Covid-19 mapping using My Maps, heat trend analysis using Google Earth Engine and more by non-profits and researchers in India. Check them all out here.
While our Bangalore summit took place at the Google office, our Delhi summit was hosted at the WWF India office and could not have been possible without their support.
Check out all the talks from the summit here and subscribe to our mailing list to stay updated on future events.
