Esri World Imagery Waybacklivingatlas.arcgis.com
Archive of every published version of Esri's World Imagery basemap since 2014. Compare high-resolution satellite snapshots side by side to see when local changes happened.
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tools / google-earth
Google Earth
3D globe with high-resolution satellite imagery, 3D buildings and terrain. The desktop Pro version adds historical imagery, which you need for change-over-time analysis.
freewebdesktopmobile
field note
Use Google Earth Pro (desktop) for the historical imagery slider. It lets you date when a structure appeared or disappeared, and confirm a scene matches a specific time window.
similar tools
USGS EarthExplorerearthexplorer.usgs.gov
US Geological Survey portal for searching and downloading Landsat imagery back to 1972, declassified spy-satellite photos (CORONA), aerial photography and elevation data.
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Bellingcat OpenStreetMap Searchosm-search.bellingcat.com
No-code proximity search over OpenStreetMap. Pick features you can see in an image (e.g. a park, a tram stop, a tower) and a distance, and it returns every place where they occur together.
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Copernicus Browserbrowser.dataspace.copernicus.eu
The official Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem viewer. Free access to the full Sentinel archive with visualisation, comparison, timelapse and download tools.
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GeoSpygeospy.ai
AI photo geolocation that predicts where an image was taken from its visual content alone (architecture, vegetation, road features) and returns candidate regions or coordinates.
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HeyWhatsThatheywhatsthat.com
Computes the visible horizon and viewshed from any point using elevation data, and labels the peaks you'd see. Helps confirm what's visible from a claimed location.
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