Online Maps

Google Maps

The following basics of Google Maps are now default for all users:

• Search Bar —> Accept practically any type of input, full address, partial address, or GPS coordinates, Company names and types of businesses, …

• Satellite View —> The lower left area of any map will offer a satellite view. A satellite view of your target location is always vital to every investigation.

• Globe View —> The Globe view (globe icon) in the lower right is similar, but usually offers a unique view from a different date. It also presents a rotation option. This presents new angles of your target.

• Street View —> If the Street View option is available, Google has been in the area and captured a photo of the location from the street. Dragging and dropping the small orange person in the lower right menu will open a street view from ground level at the area specified.

• Historic Street Views —> View all stored street view images for any single location. Click on the small clock in order, move a slider bar which will present different views. This can often reveal additional vehicles or missing structures associated with an investigation.

• Distance Measurement —> While in map or satellite view, right-click on your starting point and choose

• "Measure distance". Click anywhere on the map to create a path vou want to measure. Further clicks add additional measuring points. You can also drag a point to move it, or click a point to remove it. The total distance in both miles or kilometers will appear under the search box. When finished, right-click on the map and select clear measurement.

• GPS Coordinates —> Clicking on any point will load a small window in the bottom center that identifies the exact GPS coordinates of the chosen location. If this is not visible, right-click any point and select "What's here". Searching via GPS will be more precise than other queries.

- Google Earth Pro

To install:

wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb

sudo apt install -y ./google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb

sudo rm google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb

Within the application, the first step is to display your location of interest. This can be accomplished by typing the address or GPS coordinates in the upper left search field. When you see your target location and have set the zoom to an appropriate level, you are ready to start adding layers. By default, you will only see the satellite imagery of the location. The menu on the left possesses options for adding new content to this view. The last box in this menu is titled "Layers". Inside this menu are several data sets that can be enabled and disabled by the checkbox next to each. I recommend disabling all layers and then enabling one at a time to analyze the data that is added to your map view. The following details will explain the layers of interest.

! Historical Image Option: Click the "clock" in the upper menu bar and the move the slide, the result will be various satelite images of the target location taken at different times.

Other Map Tools

- Bing Maps (bing.com/maps)

Similar to Google Maps, Bing offers a map view, satellite view, angled view, and street view. The imagery provided by Bing will always be unique to the images available in Google Maps.

Bing does not always present the various 3D view options, which they call "Bird's Eye View".

- Zoom Earth (zoom.earth)

This multiple satellite imagery website presents views from NASA, Bing, and AreGIS. Occasionally, the ArcGIS data is more recent than Google or Bing.

One advantage of Zoom Earth is the ability to view satellite images in true full-screen mode. This allows creation of full-screen captures without branding, menus, or borders.

- Here (wego.here.com)

It now mostly contains identical images to Bing Maps. Howevet, it has unique images on occasion.

- Yandex (yandex.com/maps)

- Descartes Labs (maps.descarteslabs.com)

The unique part is the ability to search based on image.

- Snapchat (map.snapchat.com)

This does not work well when investigating a home address, but can be incredibly useful when researching a specific event, school, or public area.

- Wikimapia (wikimapia.org)

It combines the various satellite options for Google, Bing, and others. It also possesses crowd-sourced data and images.

- Dual Maps (data.mashedworld.com/dualmaps/ map.htm)

This website provides a satellite view of a location on both Google Maps and Bing Maps simultaneously.

- Land Viewer (eos.com/landviewer)

Images here are often generated from weather satellites, and restrict zoom levels to a city view.

Usefull to document potential weather at a crime scene (clouds, rain, or clear).

- Landsat Look (landsatlook.usgs.gov)

This is very similar to Land Viewer, but with additional historic images.

- Acre Value (acrevalue.com)

It attempts to identify property boundaries for an address.

Requires a paid account in order to see property owner details. However, we can extract this information from the site with a few steps. First, right-click the site and launch the Inspector, click the "Network" tab. Next, click on the property of interest. You should see a "xhr" entry within the Inspector.

After selecting this entry, click the "Response tab on the right; expand "data"; expand "parcels"; and look for entries titled "O", "1", etc. Enter the "Parcel ID" for your target into the search field titled "filter properties".

- Apple Maps (satellites.pro)

While not an official Apple product, Satellite Pro provides Apple Maps aerial views.

Real Estate

zillow.com, redfin.com, etc.

These websites display information about homes which ate currently available for sale or have recently sold. I usually search this option in hopes of locating interior images of a suspect home. This can often identify personal belongings, interests, and family information.

Vidi

vidi.world

If you need live video from a specific location, you can hire someone through this site. If you wanted a live video stream in front of a specific business, you can offer a "bounty" for that task.

Historic Imagery

Researching different satellite views of a single location can have many benefits.

- Historic Aerials (historicaerials.com)

Satellite imagery from several years prior. These views will be unique.

- World Imagery Wayback (Iivingatlas.arcgis.com/wavback)

Alternative to Historic Aerials.

- Old Maps Online (oldmapsonline.org)

Road maps from the past 100 years.

You might learn that a target location possessed a different street name in the past or identify the approximate year when a specific road was built.

Crowd-Sourced Street Views

Street View maps from services such as Google and Bing are nothing new.

With street view options, these services are fairly responsible and block most faces and license plates. This makes it difficult for investigators trying to identify a suspect vehicle parked at a home or present at a crime scene prior to the incident.

- Mapillary (mapillary.com)

While in any map view, coloted lines indicate that an individual has provided street-level images to Mapillary, usually from a GPS-enabled smart phone. This is actually quite common, as many people record video of their driving trips which could be used in case of an accident.

Clicking these colored lines reveals the street view images in the lower portion of the screen. Expanding these images allows you to navigate through that individual's images

These services are attempting to determine when a license plate is legible, and then blurring it. When the plate is farther away and more difficult to read, it is ignored. When this happens modify the image with the following: crop; invert with Photoshop; turn brightness down to 0%; and height contrast to 100%. The result is a legible license plate.

- Karta (kartaview.org)

After exhausting your options on Mapillary, continue to Karta.

These sites allow you to identify the uploader's username, mapping history, number of posted images, and profile image. You can also select to watch all of the captured images from a specific user as he or she travels daily.

IntelTechniques Maps Tool

The first portion of this tool allows entry of a physical address. The first field presents a mapping API page which includes the GPS coordinates of your target.

These will be used in the second portion of the page. This area allows entry of GPS coordinates for several mapping options.

Code in Location.html.

Map Shadows

Analyzing shadows within any images, even those which do not originate with satellite imagery, can help identify the date and time of capture.

We can use Shade Map (shademap.app) to identify the most likely date and time of this satellite capture.

Click the date in the lower-left and drag the month bar until the shadows seem to match the horizontal position within our target image.

This technique could also be used when you identify a photograph posted to social media. If you know the approximate location and time of year, it should be fairly easy to establish the approximate time of capture.

Map Modification/Customization

Occasionally, you may want to modify or customize a map for your needs.

- Scribble Maps (scribblemaps.com)

Scribble Maps offers one of the easiest ways to create your own map and add any type of visual aids to the final product.

- Free Map Tools (freemaptools.com)

This service provides multiple advanced options such as mapping a radius around a point of interest.