Have you ever wondered what the view is like from the rooftop of the Beacon Tower in Nanaimo, B.C.?

Would you like to know if there is a man selling hot dogs at the corner of Commercial and Wharf Streets in the Vancouver Island city's picturesque downtown?

Visitors to Google Earth can inspect almost every square centimetre of the city of 80,000, which has become the world's most active supplier of geographic data to the mapping search engine service from the U.S. portal site.

The site allows people to zoom in on satellite imagery of city landmarks, arriving ferries and even local bus routes and view them as it they are flying overhead.
"Everything you could imagine that the city government would want to tell people, they seem to have found a way to tell that using Google Earth," said Michael Jones, chief technical officer at Google Earth. "We see other cities around the world doing this, but none with the degree and zeal of Nanaimo."

About 100 cities are providing detailed information to Google Maps, Mr. Jones said. This month, B.C.'s Agriculture and Lands Minister met with top Google Earth brass to discuss the province supplying updated information for Google Earth and Google Maps. If the project goes ahead, British Columbia would be the first Canadian province to provide information on things such as traffic and mineral resources.

Nanaimo's achievement is due to the efforts of a team of computer technicians at city hall who have spent the past two years uploading data, aerial photos and computer code to Google Earth.

The high-tech project has the blessing of the department's superiors, who hope the abundance of geographic information will make Nanaimo a destination for tourists and developers and help residents find what they need, one click at a time.

"I would say the whole city staff is very proud," city manager Jerry Berry said.

The project began when a soft-spoken programmer named Jason Birch took a look at a new mapping program called Google Earth in 2005.

"I'd never seen anything like it," said Mr. Birch, 38, who has a university degree in geography and a passion for computers.

For two years, he's experimented with images, colours and a programming language called KML. He's also worked overtime, spending a few hours with his wife and twin sons, then playing with Google Earth from 8 p.m. until midnight, and even logging voluntary hours on the weekend.

"I'm still married," he said with a laugh.

During its first year Nanaimo's maps looked fairly blurry, but these days 10 centimetres on the ground in Nanaimo equals one pixel on Google Earth - significantly higher resolution than maps covering the rest of the world. Google Earth estimates that about 30 per cent of the world's surface has been mapped, and only 50 per cent of that has resolution that is more detailed than one metre a pixel.

"You can find your house, you can find your boat, you can find your trails," said Guyllermo Ferrero, Nanaimo's manager of business applications.

The programmers at Google Earth took notice. They have called Mr. Birch to see what they can do to tweak the service and make it easier for users.

City officials say they hope the maps help boost tourism. Developers also love using the tool when looking for investment properties, the city manager said.

But Mr. Jones said the real benefit will be for those who live within the city's now very visible boundaries, and who will soon be able to access up-to-the-minute information about their hometown through a single website.

"If there's a tsunami coming, the government's eager to put warnings on the radio, television and newspaper," he said. "You want the information to be where the readers are. Well, with more than 250 million users of Google Earth, we're one of the major places where people are looking at things."

As Google Earth expands its capabilities - and the Nanaimo government makes even more civic information accessible - users will some day be able to see what roads are closed for construction on a given day, what area of the waterfront will be the site of a fireworks festival, current assessments of property values, city ordinance, traffic updates and other valuable information.

"Nanaimo's a good example of really using our tools to communicate with their citizenry," Mr. Jones said.

Mr. Jones said he does not see a security risk in providing detailed civic information and maps to the general public, so long as governments act responsibly.

Google Earth is not in the security business, he said, and relies on its users to self-edit the information they provide.

"We don't know what's secret and what's not," he said. "But we do tell everybody that our data is seen by people all around the world, and we don't know who they are, so give us the data you want the world to know."