I recently received a question about accessing and using Google Street View data in a public health research project. In particular they are interested in looking at time series images for rural areas of Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to characterize neighborhood environment re: safety, green space, etc.

What I've found is that Google provides an API for harvesting GSV images, but it appears to return by default only the most recent imagery near a given address. (The exception to that is if you know the "pano_id" which is somewhat stable, but there appears to be no way to query the pano_id's of older imagery.) 

Have any of you worked with historical GSV imagery before, and/or do you know of ways to access these images? Or if you have suggestions for alternatives for Google Street View, that'd be helpful too.

Many thanks!

Susan
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