Digital Earth
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Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president
Concept
Original vision
In a speech
Many aspects of his proposal have been realized - for instance,
An emerging view
Two noteworthy excerpts from the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth,[4] ratified September 12, 2009 at the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth in Beijing:
- "Digital Earth is an integral part of other advanced technologies including: earth observation, geo-information systems, global positioning systems, communication networks, sensor webs, electromagnetic identifiers, virtual reality, grid computation, etc. It is seen as a global strategic contributor to scientific and technological developments, and will be a catalyst in finding solutions to international scientific and societal issues."
- "Digital Earth should play a strategic and sustainable role in addressing such challenges to human society as natural resource depletion, food and water insecurity, energy shortages, environmental degradation, natural disasters response, population explosion, and, in particular, global climate change."
Next-generation digital Earth
A group of international geographic and environmental scientists from government, industry, and academia brought together by the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science,[5] and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission[6] recently published "Next-Generation Digital Earth" a position paper[7] that suggests its eight key elements:
- Not one Digital Earth, but multiple connected globes/infrastructures addressing the needs of different audiences: citizens, communities, policymakers, scientists, educationalists.
- Problem oriented: e.g. environment, health, societal benefit areas, and transparent on the impacts of technologies on the environment
- Allowing search through time and space to find similar/analogue situations with real time data from both sensors and humans (different from what existing GIS can do, and different from adding analytical functions to a virtual globe)
- Asking questions about change, identification of anomalies in space in both human and environmental domains (flag things that are not consistent with their surroundings in real time)
- Enabling access to data, information, services, and models as well as scenarios and forecasts: from simple queries to complex analyses across the environmental and social domains.
- Supporting the visualization of abstract concepts and data types (e.g. low income, poor health, and semantics)
- Based on open access, and participation across multiple technological platforms, and media (e.g. text, voice and multi-media)
- Engaging, interactive, exploratory, and a laboratory for learning and for multidisciplinary education and science.
Key developments
Significant progress towards Digital Earth has been achieved over the last decade as collected in a survey paper by Mahdavi-Amiri et al.,[8] including work in these categories:
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
The number of
Geobrowsers
The scientific use of geo-browser
Sensor networks
Geosensors are defined as "...any device receiving and measuring environmental stimuli that can be geographically referenced."
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)
The term
International community
The International Journal of Digital Earth is a peer-reviewed research journal, launched in 2008, concerned with the science and technology of Digital Earth and its applications in all major disciplines.
The International Society for Digital Earth is a non-political, non-governmental and not-for-profit international organization, principally for promotion of academic exchange, science and technology innovation, education, and international collaboration.[16]
Several International Symposia on Digital Earth (ISDE) have been held. There have been seven ISDE symposia and three Digital Earth Summits. Proceedings for many of them[17] are available. The 7th Symposium was held in Perth, Western Australia in 2011. The 4th Digital Earth Summit[18] was held in Wellington, New Zealand in September, 2012.
Digital Earth Reference Model (DERM)
The term Digital Earth Reference Model (DERM) was coined by Tim Foresman in context with a vision for an all encompassing geospatial platform as an abstract for information flow in support of Al Gore's vision for a Digital Earth.[19] The Digital Earth reference model seeks to facilitate and promote the use of georeferenced information from multiple sources over the Internet.[20] A digital Earth reference model defines a fixed global reference frame for the Earth using four principles of a digital system,[21] namely:
- Discrete partitioning using regular or irregular cell mesh, tiling or Grid;[22]
- Data acquisition using signal processing theory (continuous analogor other digital sources to the discrete cell partitions;
- An ordering or naming of cells that can provide both unique spatial indexing and geographic location address;[23]
- A set of mathematical operations built on the indexing for algebraic, geometric, Boolean and image processing transforms, etc.
The Open Geospatial Consortium has a spatial reference system standard based on the DERM called a [Discrete Global Grid] System (DGGS). According to OGC "a DGGS is a spatial reference system that uses a hierarchical tessellation of cells to partition and address the globe. DGGS are characterized by the properties of their cell structure, geo-encoding, quantization strategy and associated mathematical functions. The OGC DGGS standard supports the specification of standardized DGGS infrastructures that enable the integrated analysis of very large, multi-source, multi-resolution, multi-dimensional, distributed geospatial data. Interoperability between OGC DGGS implementations is anticipated through extension interface encodings of OGC Web Services.".[24] Thus, the DGGS is a discrete, hierarchical, information grid with an addressing (or indexing) scheme to assign unique addresses to each cell across the entire DGGS Domain.[25]
Background
United States
Technology developments that support the current Digital Earth technological framework can be traced to U.S. computing advances derived from the Cold War competition, the space race, and commercial innovations. Therefore, many innovations can be tracked to corporations working for the Department of Defense or NASA. However, the philosophical foundations for Digital Earth can be more closely aligned with the increased awareness of global changes and the need to better understand the concepts of sustainability for the planet's survival. These roots can be traced back to visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller who proposed development of a GeoScope half a century ago, analogous to a microscope to examine and improve our understanding of the planet Earth.
From Fall 1998 until Fall 2000, NASA led the U.S. Digital Earth initiative in cooperation with its sister government agencies, including the Federal Geospatial Data Committee (FGDC).[26] Attention to consensus development of standards, protocols and tools through cooperative test-bed initiatives was the primary process for advancement of this initiative within the government community.[11]
In 1999, NASA was selected to head a new Interagency Digital Earth Working Group (IDEW), due to its reputation for technology innovations and its focus on the study of planetary change. The new initiative was located in the NASA's Office of
After Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, the incoming administration considered the programmatic moniker Digital Earth a political liability. Digital Earth was relegated to a minority status within the FGDC, used primarily to define 3-D visualization reference models.
China
In 1999, with the Chinese government's full backing, the inaugural
United Nations
In 2000, the
Japan
Japan, led by Keio University and JAXA, has also played a prominent international role in Digital Earth helping to create the Digital Asia Network[30] with a secretariat located in Bangkok to promote regional cooperation and initiatives. Citizens in the Gifu Prefecture upload information to community-scale Digital Earth programs with from their smartphones on topics ranging from first sightings of fireflies in spring to location of blocked handicap access ramps.[citation needed]
Events
Event | Year | Location | Theme |
---|---|---|---|
ISDE 1 | 1999 | Beijing, China | Moving towards Digital Earth |
ISDE 2 | 2001 | New Brunswick, Canada | Beyond Information Infrastructure |
ISDE 3 | 2003 | Brno, Czech Republic | Information Resources for Global Sustainability Archived 2009-02-18 at the Wayback Machine |
ISDE 4 | 2005 | Tokyo, Japan | Digital Earth as a Global Commons |
Digital Earth Summit '06 | 2006 | Auckland, New Zealand | Information Resources for Global Sustainability |
ISDE 5 | 2007 | Berkeley & San Francisco, USA | Bringing Digital Earth down to Earth |
Digital Earth Summit '08 | 2008 | Potsdam, Germany | Geoinformatics: Tools for Global Change Research |
ISDE 6 | 2009 | Beijing, China | Digital Earth in Action |
ISDE 7 | 2011 | Perth, Western Australia | ISDE7 The Knowledge Generation |
Digital Earth Summit '12 | 2012 | Wellington, New Zealand |
See also
- Destination Earth (European Union)
- Digital twin
- Geocode
- Geodesic grid
- Géoportail
- Geoweb
- Grid reference
- International Cartographic Association (ICA)
- International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE)
- Spatial index
References
- ^ "The Digital Earth - Al Gore". digitalearth-isde.org. 1998-01-31. Retrieved 2015-10-13.
- ISSN 1753-8947.
- Bibcode:2014arXiv1412.2078B.
- ^ "The 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth - Digital Earth in Action". 159.226.224.4. 2009-09-12. Archived from the original on 2012-02-27. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ "Vespucci Initiative". Vespucci.org. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ "Joint Research Centre - JRC - European Commission". Ec.europa.eu. 2012-07-15. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ a b c M. Craglia, et al (2008). "Next-Generation Digital Earth. International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, (3):146–167". Retrieved 2012-09-30.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - .
- ^ "Inspire > Welcome To Inspire". Inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ "UN Geographic Information Working Group". Ungiwg.org. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ .
- ^ "ArcGIS Explorer | GIS Viewer | Free GIS Software & Maps". Esri.com. Archived from the original on 2012-06-28. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ "Get Inspired". earth.google.com.
- ^ "Demos-WorldWind Java/NASA WorldWind". worldwind.arc.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 2009-10-24. Retrieved 2009-10-23.
- S2CID 2105836.
- ^ [1] Archived November 26, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ [2] Archived August 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "4th Digital Earth Summit 2012 | Home". Digitalearth12.org.nz. 2012-09-04. Archived from the original on 2012-10-22. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
- ^ Tim Foresman conversation with Charles Herring in New Zealand, Digital Earth Convention, 2007
- ^ Evans, John D. (June 2001). "NASA Digital Earth Office". Archived from the original on 2008-10-10.
- ^ Perry R. Peterson; Gene Girard; Charles Herring (2006). "Digital Earth Reference Model". Pyxisinnovation.com.
- ^ Sahr K.D. White; A.J. Kimerling (2003). "Geodesic Discrete Global Grid Systems - Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol 30, No. 2, pp. 121–134" (PDF). Survey of Discrete Global Grids. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-09-11.
- .
- ^ OGC Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) Core Standard
- ^ "Discrete global positions" (PDF). www.globalgridsystems.com.[permanent dead link ]
- ^ "The Federal Geographic Data Committee — Federal Geographic Data Committee". www.fgdc.gov.
- ^ (Admin), Roger Longhorn. "GSDI - Home". www.gsdi.org.
- ^ "unep.net". Archived from the original on 2019-03-31. Retrieved 2019-03-21.
- ^ "UNGIWG - "Free the DATA !!!!....."". www.ungiwg.org.
- ^ "GIC - Geoinformatics Center - Title here". Archived from the original on 2008-01-06. Retrieved 2006-10-16.
Further reading
- Guo, Huadong; Goodchild, Michael F.; Annoni, Alessandro, eds. (2020). Manual of Digital Earth. Singapore: Springer. S2CID 208086021.
External links
- Digital Earth technologies
- ADEPT - Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (1999–2004) Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
- US Government Digital Earth Reference Model (DERM)
- Global Spatial Data Model (GSDM)
- Planetary Skin: A global platform for a new Era of Collaboration
- Digital marketing China
- PYXIS WorldView Studio: Digital Earth platform for spatial analysis and sharing map data Archived 2021-01-22 at the Wayback Machine