When a hurricane forms or a river swells, the urgent question isn't just where the crisis will strike, but who will be hit the hardest. Google's latest update to Earth AI aims to answer both questions at once.
The company said Thursday that it's expanding its geospatial technology, pairing its Gemini AI model with the vast store of weather, population and satellite data it has built over decades of mapping the planet. The result is a system that can connect the dots between physical events and human impact -- predicting not just the storm, but the communities most vulnerable to it.
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Google Earth AI's new features
At the heart of the update is a feature that Google Earth calls geospatial reasoning. It's essentially a connective layer that lets AI "think across" different types of Earth data -- weather forecasts, population maps, imagery -- to produce more complete answers.
Instead of simply showing where a cyclone might make landfall, for example, this geospatial reasoning works to identify which neighborhoods are likely to flood, how many people live there and what infrastructure, such as power lines, might fail first. Google says that approach is already helping groups like GiveDirectly, which uses the system to pinpoint households most in need of cash aid after a flood.
Rather than show where a storm may hit, Geospatial Reasoning can identify which neighborhoods are likely to flood, how many people live there and what infrastructure is at risk. Google Earth
This is part of a broader trend within Google to use Gemini not just for chatting or coding, but to reason about the physical world. "To solve a complex problem, you need to see the whole picture," the company wrote in its press release, and geospatial reasoning is designed to do that.
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