Google Earth, U.N. Pair Up to Map World Refugees' Movements

GENEVA — Internet hunt giant Google Inc. unveiled a new characteristic Tuesday for its popular correspondence programmes that radiances a limelight on the motion of refugees around the world.

The maps will aid human-centered trading operations as well as help inform the public about the billions who have got fled their places because of force or hardship, according to the business office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.

"All of the things that we make for refugees in the refugee encampments around the human race will go more than visible," U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.

Users can download Google World software system to see artificial satellite mental images of refugee hot musca volitans such as as Darfur, Republic Of Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee federal agency explicates where the refugees have got come up from and what jobs they face.

Although not all parts of the human race are displayed at the same high resolution, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company have made an attempt to let users to zoom along in closely on refugee camps.

In the Djabal refugee encampment in eastern Chad, which is place to refugees from the struggle in neighbour Darfur, Google World users can see individual collapsible shelters clustered together amid a sparse landscape, and larn about the trouble of providing H2O to some 15,000 people.

Google states more than than 350 million people have got already downloaded Google Earth. The software system was launched three old age ago and originally intended for highly realistic picture games, but its usage by saviors during Hurricane Katrina led the company to attain out to authorities and non-profit-making organizations.

Google World have since teamed up with tons of non-profit-making groupings seeking to raise awareness, recruit military volunteers and promote donations.

Among them are the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the U.N. Environmental Program and the Jane Jane Goodall Institute.

"Google desires to form the world's information and do it universally accessible and useful," said Samuel Widmann, the caput of Google World Europe.

The company estimations that 80 percentage of the world's information can be plotted on a map in some way.

Rebecca Moore, who heads the Google World Outreach programme for non-profit-making groups, said the company makes not command the information published using the software.

Google is considering offering a stand-alone version of its correspondence software system that tin be used by assistance workers in the field who make not have got an Internet connexion on hand, she said.

Google said it will also supply non-profit-making groupings in respective states with preparation and free transcripts of its $400 professional correspondence software, an offering it bes after to revolve out across the Earth over time.