Breakout Sessions

Plenary TalksLightning Talks and Training Session recordings are now available!


Breakout Session Descriptions


For slide decks and training materials, see the Training Materials Page


Arrays and Matrices in Earth Engine

Presenter: Nick Clinton

Description: Arrays, matrices, and linear algebra in general are powerful tools in Earth Engine, and a bit tricky to learn.  Get a deep dive into advanced applications in Earth Engine using arrays and matrices.

Prerequisites: Introduction to Earth Engine API and Advanced Earth Engine API


Building Earth Engine-based Web Applications with Google App Engine

Presenter: Jordon Mears

Description: All of the websites that call Earth Engine, like Global Forest Watch, the Map of Life, and in fact the Earth Engine Playground, use Google App Engine to host the sites and connect to Earth Engine.  Learn how to build and deploy Earth Engine based applications to Google App Engine. Featuring the Google Cloud SDK and the Earth Engine Python API.

Prerequisites: Google account, laptop with Google Chrome installed and the Secure Shell plugin installed.


Classifiers and Classification

Presenter: Noel Gorelick

Description: An explanation of how the Earth Engine classifier system works, simple and advanced examples of how to use it, and tips on getting the most out of it.

Prerequisites: Google Earth Engine 101 or equivalent prior experience.

Cloud Removal in the Cloud

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

Description: Got clouds? Earth observation data is messy, and often it is difficult to separate out the signal from the noise. Clouds are one obvious type of noise, but the presence of haze, shadows and even snow may impact certain types of analyses. This class will give an overview of different techniques for accounting for noise, when analyzing either a single image or an image time series, and explore example scripts (hands-on).

Prerequisites: Google Earth Engine 101


Debugging Your Earth Engine Scripts

Presenter: Noel Gorelick

Description: What to do when it all goes south. Techniques to help you debug your Earth Engine scripts, and for when that fails, suggestions on how you can help us help you.

Prerequisites: Google Earth Engine 101 or equivalent prior experience.


Earth Engine and Google Cloud Platform

Presenter: Matt Hancher

Description: Learn how to use Earth Engine together with other products in the Google Cloud Platform.  This talk will introduce you to a variety of Cloud Platform services, including Cloud Storage for managing and serving data, Compute Engine and Dataflow for running computations, and Pub/Sub for building real-time analysis applications.  Then we'll show you how you can seamlessly use these systems together with Earth Engine to build powerful geo data processing applications in the cloud.

Prerequisites: This class is aimed at experienced Earth Engine users who have a general familiarity with cloud computing concepts, but no prior experience with Google Cloud Platform is assumed.


Earth Engine + SkySat: change detection for a dynamic world

Presenter: Kristi Bohl

In this hands-on session we'll leverage high-cadence, high-resolution SkySat imagery to detect patterns of life on Earth.  We'll pursue use cases from agriculture to construction change detection, and illustrate how high-res imagery can be used effectively in concert with other datasets.  

Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced Earth Engine ability is recommended.


Earth Engine Data: Importing, Exporting, and Rendering

Presenter: Chris Herwig

This session will cover how users can bring their own vector/raster data into Earth Engine and the different ways users can take the results of their analyses out of Earth Engine.


Earth Engine, Python & IPython/Jupyter Notebooks

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

Description: This session will cover developing algorithms using the Earth Engine Python API and will cover using Jupyter Notebooks for algorithm development.

Prerequisites: Earth Engine 101 or prior experience in using Earth Engine. Install Docker on your laptop so you can do the hands-on activities.


Easy User interfaces for your EE scripts

Presenter: Max Heinritz

Description: This class will introduce new tools that make it easy to design interactive Earth Engine visualizations.  More to come!


EE101A : Getting Started with the Earth Engine API, part 1

Presenter: Dave Thau

The Earth Engine API (application programming interface) provides the ability to create your own algorithms to process raster and vector imagery.  This session is geared toward people who would like to analyze satellite and vector data. The session will be hands-on, using the Earth Engine Javascript code editor. This part of the class will focus on accessing imagery, creating composites, and running analyses over stacks of images.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with at least one software language, or at least not be afraid of learning as we go.


EE101B : Getting Started with the Earth Engine API, part 2

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

This is part two of the Getting Started class.  This part of the class will continue where part 1 left off, focusing on computing statistics on imagery, creating charts, exporting the results of your analyses.

Prerequisites: Earth Engine 101A.


EE201 : Hands-on Earth Engine Algorithms

Presenter: Nick Clinton

This is a hands on workshop covering topics such as classification, phenology modeling, terrain visualization, and spectral unmixing. Concepts include arrays, charts, computing statistics in regions, and spectral transformations.

Prerequisites: Intermediate programming with the Earth Engine API. Familiarity with map() and reduce().


Mobile Data Collection with Open Data Kit Part 1

Presenter: Tanya Birch

Description: Open Data Kit is a set of tools that allows you to collect field data, such as text, photos/videos, and GPS location from an Android device where there's no internet connection and then publish that data to the web when you're back online. Once you've gathered your field data, we will map and visualize them. We'll use XLSforms for form creation, ODK Aggregate for data storage and train a classifier in EE based on ground points collected with ODK.

Prerequisites: None.


Mobile Data Collection and Open Data Kit Part 2

Presenter: Tanya Birch

Description: We'll dive deeper into creating forms with XLSforms for collecting data with ODK Collect, get our field data into the Earth Engine workspace, do a simple classification of ground data in Earth Engine and finally merge hand-drawn points with your ground datasets in the Earth Engine Playground. Prerequisites: Mobile Data Collection Part 1 unless you're familiar with using ODK Collect and Aggregate.


Forest Applications

Presenter: Dave Thau

Description: Forest applications were one of the first areas of focus for Earth Engine.  This class will discuss many of the forest applications of Earth Engine, go through some forest-specific datasets we have, and explore Earth Engine scripts that people have used to analyze forest-related data.  This will also be a good time to chat about possible new applications of Earth Engine in the forest domain.


Health Applications

Presenter: Allie Lieber

Description: This class will discuss many of the health applications of Earth Engine. We will walk through a short lab that will introduce you to health-specific and other relevant in the data catalog and to Earth Engine scripts to get you started.


Introduction to Fusion Tables

Presenter: Vanessa Schneider

Description: Looking to tell a visual story with your data? In this interactive workshop, we’ll teach you how to get started with Fusion Tables, a tool to help you host, visualize and publish your data as maps, charts and timelines. The session will start with a brief overview of Fusion Tables, then we’ll dive into some hands-on examples to get you familiar with how easily your data can be turned into a visualization with impact.

Prerequisites: Please make sure to create a Google account ahead of this session.


Introduction to Geo Permissions

Presenter: Vanessa Schneider

Description: Using our mapping tools on your websites, in print, or in a video? Get a rundown on the permissions and licensing basics for Google Maps and Earth.

Prerequisites: Review the Google Permissions website.


My First Maps API

Presenter: Christiaan Adams

Description: Take "baby steps" into the Google Maps API world.  In this session, you'll create a "Hello World" Maps API webpage, and will learn how to do things like change the options (background map type, initial location, etc.), overlay data and KML layers, and start to showcase your first Earth Engine maps. While this is taught for non-programmers by a non-programmer, we will work with snippets of code copied-and-pasted from the developers.google.com website.

Prerequisites: Comfort opening an HTML page, but no prior JavaScript coding necessary.


Storytelling with Google Tools

Presenter: Christiaan Adams

Description: Description: Get an overview of Google's mapping tools, and discuss how to use them to tell your stories and share your data. We will look at Google Earth, Google Maps (APIs), MyMaps, Fusion Tables, Tour Builder, and Street View. We'll explore options for visualizing data from Earth Engine and otherwise, and discuss tools for creating map overlays that tell your story and communicate your message on the rich backdrop of imagery and other geo data.

Prerequisites: None


Timelapse Tours

Presenter: Paul Dille (for Randy Sargent)

Description: Timelapse Earth builds on Earth Engine to show three decades of planetary change, both man-made and natural.  In this session, you'll see hot spots of Earth change, learn how to embed Timelapse Earth into HTML materials, and also learn how to author guided tours to highlight particular phenomena on the animated planet.

Prerequisites: None.


Time Series Analysis

Presenter: Nick Clinton

Description: This session will cover time series topics including linear modeling, auto-correlation, cross-correlation, auto-regression, smoothing and iteration.

Prerequisites: Intermediate to advanced programming with the Earth Engine API.


Tour of the Earth Engine API: Reducers, Joins, Charting and More

Presenter: Nick Clinton

This session is an a tour of functionality from selected portions of the API. The Reducers, Joins, Charts and Arrays packages will be covered.

Prerequisites: EE101 or equivalent experience.


Water Cycle Analysis

Presenter: Tyler Erickson

Description: The global water cycle is one of the main focus areas for Earth Engine. This class will give an overview of water cycle analyses that are being enabled with Earth Engine, go through relevant datasets in the Earth Engine catalog, and explore related programing scripts (hands-on). This will also be a good time to chat about potential new applications of Earth Engine for water cycle analysis.

Prerequisites: Google Earth Engine 101


Web Application Development Case Study: Dissecting the Matt Hansen Science in the Classroom application

Presenters: Max Heinritz, Andrew Chang

Description: Building on content in the Google App Engine web app course, learn how the EE team created an EE-powered web app in collaboration with Prof. Matt Hansen and Science in the Classroom.  The app's source code will be available so you can use it as a basis for you own applications.


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