Set up Google Earth Engine

Many of VoxCity’s data sources (land cover, canopy height, and several DEMs) are served through Google Earth Engine. This guide walks through the one-time setup so those sources work.

1. Create an Earth Engine–enabled Cloud Project

  1. Sign in with a Google account that has Earth Engine access.

  2. Follow Google’s Cloud project setup guide to create (or register) a Cloud Project for Earth Engine.

  3. Note the project ID — you may need it when initializing Earth Engine.

2. Authenticate

Local environment

earthengine authenticate

This opens a browser, asks you to grant access, and stores a token on your machine for future sessions.

Google Colab

# Click the displayed link, generate a token, then paste it back
!earthengine authenticate --auth_mode=notebook

3. Initialize in Python

VoxCity initializes Earth Engine for you when needed, but you can initialize it explicitly to confirm the setup and select your project:

import ee

ee.Initialize(project="your-earthengine-project-id")
print("Earth Engine ready")

If initialization fails, re-run the authentication step above and confirm that your Cloud Project has the Earth Engine API enabled.

Next steps