Google my maps [ A Tutorial].

what is my maps?

My maps is an online web GIS tool that was developed by google to help gmail users easily create, share and store maps on the fly. Any one with an active Gmail account can use this service at a free cost.

Vectorization (Digitizing)

In the modern Geo-spatial domain, a lot of raster data is available in form of satellite images,aerial photos , scanned maps e.t.c. Vectorization helps to convert the raster features into vector features. This can be done for a number of reasons such as preparation of data for multi criteria Decision Analysis, map making, e.t.c

In real world, the process is always done using software which can be both open source or commercial e.g QGIS and ARC GIS software. As an advantage over these software, my maps doesn’t require installation: it is an online tool that is run on modern web browsers such as Chrome and Firefox

My maps is built with an easy to use interface and an automatic storage of features on google drive.

Steps to follow

1. Sign into your Gmail account

2. Open Google and search google my maps

3. Click and Open My maps. Select get started to take you to a new page where you click  to create new map

4. Once you click create a new map, a map will load in a new window as shown below. Zoom to the area you want to digitize using the zoom buttons

5. Change the base map from the default( map view) to satellite view

6. Using the draw line tool draw polygons representing various class and rename them accordingly as shown below.

7. After extracting various features, export the features as a KML file and download them.