Digital Earth
Encyclopedia
Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president Al Gore
in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is spatially referenced and interconnected with the world’s digital knowledge archives.
in Los Angeles on January 31, 1998, Gore described a digital future where schoolchildren - indeed all the world's citizens - could interact with a computer-generated three-dimensional spinning virtual globe
and access vast amounts of scientific and cultural information to help them understand the Earth and its human activities. The greater part of this knowledge store would be free to all via the Internet, however a commercial marketplace of related products and services was envisioned to co-exist, in part in order to support the expensive infrastructure such a system would require.
Clearly, many aspects of this vision have been realized, evidenced in part by the popularity of virtual globe geo-browsers
such as Google Earth
and Microsoft's Bing Maps 3D for commercial, social and scientific applications. But the Gore speech outlined a truly global, collaborative linking of systems that has yet to happen. That vision has been continually interpreted and defined by the growing global community of interest described below. As technological advances have made the unlikely possible, the vision has evolved and become more concrete, and as we better understand the interdependence of the environment and social activity, there is greater recognition of the need for such a system. Digital Earth has come to stand for the large and growing set of web-based geographic computing systems worldwide. These are both useful and promising, but do not yet constitute the envisioned "global commons."
s has grown steadily since the early 1990s, aided in part by interoperability standards maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO). Significant recent efforts to link and coordinate SDI's include Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) and the UNSDI Initiative of the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNIGWG). Between 1998 and 2001, the NASA-chaired Interagency Digital Earth Working Group (IDEW) contributed to this growth with a particular focus on interoperability issues, giving rise to the WMS (Web Mapping Service) standard among others.
such as Google Earth
, NASA's World Wind
, Skyline's TerraExplorer and ESRI's ArcGIS Explorer
has grown significantly as their functionality has improved and with the KML language
having become the de-facto standard for globe visualizations. Numerous examples can be viewed at the Google Earth Outreach Showcase and at World Wind Java Demo Applications and Applets
, an international partnership of 72 governments and the European Union
.
was coined in 2007 by geographer Michael Goodchild, referring to the rapidly growing volume of social and scientific georeference
d user-generated content
being made available on the Web by both expert and non-expert individuals and groups. This phenomenon is seen as an emerging Geoweb
that provides Application Programming Interfaces (API's) to software developers and increasingly user-friendly web mapping software
to both scientists and the public at large.
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
! 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
|-
| 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
|-
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. The Digital Earth reference model seeks to facilitate and promote the use of georeferenced information from multiple sources over the Internet.
A digital Earth reference model defines a fixed global reference frame for the Earth using four principles of a digital system
, namely:
The International Society for Digital Earth has a standing committee considering DERM implementations and standards which includes both the Earth reference frame and the ancillary requirements for metadata and attribute semantics.
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). 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.
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 Earth Sciences
. This titular focus was considered necessary to help align over 17 government agencies and keep sustainability and Earth oriented applications as a guiding principle for the Digital Earth enterprise. Components for development of 3-D Earth graphic-user-interfaces (GUIs) were placed into various technological sectors to stimulate cooperative development support. While initially limited to government personnel, industry and academia were early observers attending IDEW workshops to discuss topics such as, visualization, information fusion
, standards and interoperability, advanced computational algorithms, digital libraries
and museums. In March 2000, at a special IDEW meeting hosted by Oracle Corporation
in Herndon, Virginia
, industry representatives demonstrated several promising 3-D visualization prototypes. Within two years, these were captivating international audiences, including Kofi Annan
and Colin Powell
, in government, business, science, and mass media
who began to purchase the early commercial geo-browsers. Just as the spectacular Apollo photography of Earthrise provided an inspiring Earth-centric image for new generations to appreciate the fragility of our biosphere, the 3-D Digital Earths began inspiring growing numbers of people to the possibility of better understanding and possibly saving our planet. Introduction of satellite data into commercially accessible spatial toolboxes significantly advanced the capacity to map, monitor, and manage our planet’s resources and provide a unifying perspective on the Digital Earth vision.
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.
community, Digital Earth prowess spread to a range of applications including flood predictions, dust cloud modeling, environmental assessments, and city planning
. China has been omnipresent at all international Digital Earth conferences since and has recently founded the International Society for Digital Earth, one of the first NGOs created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
. In 2009, the International Symposium on Digital Earth returned to Beijing for its 6th meeting.
(UNEP) advanced the Digital Earth to enhance decision-makers' access to information for then Secretary-General Kofi Annan
and the United Nations Security Council
. UNEP promoted use of web-based geospatial technologies with the ability to access the world’s environmental information, in association with economic and social policy
issues. A reorganization of UNEP’s data and information resources was initiated in 2001, based on the GSDI/DE architecture for a network of distributed and interoperable databases creating a framework of linked servers. The design concept was based upon using a growing network of internet mapping software and database content with advanced capabilities to link GIS tools and applications. UNEP.net, launched in February 2001, provided UN staff with an unparalleled facility for accessing authoritative environmental data resources and a visible example to others in the UN
community. However, a universal user interface
for UNEP.net, suitable for members of Security Council, that is non-scientists, did not exist. UNEP began actively testing prototypes for a UNEP geo-browser beginning in mid-2001 with a showcase for the African community displayed at the 5th African GIS Conference in Nairobi, Kenya
November 2001. Keyhole Technology, Inc. (later purchased in 2004 by Google
and to become Google Earth
) was contracted to develop and demonstrate the first full globe 3-D interactive Digital Earth using web-stream data from a distributed database located on servers around the planet. A concerted effort within the UN community, via the Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG), followed immediately, including purchase of early Keyhole systems by 2002. UNEP provided further public demonstrations for this early Digital Earth system at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September, 2002 at Johannesburg, South Africa
. In seeking an engineering approach to system-wide development of the Digital Earth model, recommendations were made at the 3rd UNGIWG Meeting, June 2002, Washington, D.C. for creating a document on the Functional User Requirements for geo-browsers. This proposal was communicated to the ISDE Secretariat in Beijing and the organizing committee for the 3rd International Symposium on Digital Earth and agreement was reached by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
-sponsored Secretariat to host the first of the two Digital Earth geo-browser meetings.
and JAXA, has also played a prominent international role in Digital Earth helping to create the Digital Asia Network with a secretariat located in Bangkok to promote regional cooperation and initiatives. The high-tech environment for Japanese society has been a powerful enabler for an impressive array of innovative advances using Digital Earth technology. Citizens in the Gifu Prefecture
are uploading information directly into community-scale Digital Earth programs uplinked from their camera-cell phones on topics ranging from first sightings of fire-flies in spring to location of blocked handicap access ramps. Applications of the Japanese Digital Earth initiatives range from the use of the world’s largest super-computer for modeling climate change
to citizen-participatory risk assessment
in planning for the permanent disposal of radioactive nuclear waste
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is spatially referenced and interconnected with the world’s digital knowledge archives.
Original Vision
In a speech prepared for the California Science CenterCalifornia Science Center
The California Science Center is a state agency and museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles. Billed as the West Coast's largest hands-on science center, the California ScienCenter is a public-private partnership between the State and the California Science Center Foundation...
in Los Angeles on January 31, 1998, Gore described a digital future where schoolchildren - indeed all the world's citizens - could interact with a computer-generated three-dimensional spinning virtual globe
Virtual globe
A virtual globe is a 3D software model or representation of the Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and position. Compared to a conventional globe, virtual globes have the...
and access vast amounts of scientific and cultural information to help them understand the Earth and its human activities. The greater part of this knowledge store would be free to all via the Internet, however a commercial marketplace of related products and services was envisioned to co-exist, in part in order to support the expensive infrastructure such a system would require.
Clearly, many aspects of this vision have been realized, evidenced in part by the popularity of virtual globe geo-browsers
Virtual globe
A virtual globe is a 3D software model or representation of the Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and position. Compared to a conventional globe, virtual globes have the...
such as Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
and Microsoft's Bing Maps 3D for commercial, social and scientific applications. But the Gore speech outlined a truly global, collaborative linking of systems that has yet to happen. That vision has been continually interpreted and defined by the growing global community of interest described below. As technological advances have made the unlikely possible, the vision has evolved and become more concrete, and as we better understand the interdependence of the environment and social activity, there is greater recognition of the need for such a system. Digital Earth has come to stand for the large and growing set of web-based geographic computing systems worldwide. These are both useful and promising, but do not yet constitute the envisioned "global commons."
An Emerging View
Two noteworthy excerpts from the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth, 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, and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission recently published "Next-Generation Digital Earth," a position paper 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, including work in these categories:Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
The number of Spatial Data InfrastructureSpatial Data Infrastructure
A spatial data infrastructure is a framework of spatial data, metadata, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an efficient and flexible way...
s has grown steadily since the early 1990s, aided in part by interoperability standards maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...
(ISO). Significant recent efforts to link and coordinate SDI's include Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) and the UNSDI Initiative of the UN Geographic Information Working Group (UNIGWG). Between 1998 and 2001, the NASA-chaired Interagency Digital Earth Working Group (IDEW) contributed to this growth with a particular focus on interoperability issues, giving rise to the WMS (Web Mapping Service) standard among others.
Geobrowsers
The scientific use of geo-browser virtual globesVirtual globe
A virtual globe is a 3D software model or representation of the Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and position. Compared to a conventional globe, virtual globes have the...
such as Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
, NASA's World Wind
NASA World Wind
World Wind is an open-source virtual globe developed by NASA and the open source community for use on personal computers. Old versions need Microsoft Windows but the more recent Java version, , is cross platform and provides a suite of . The World Wind Java version was awarded in November 2009...
, Skyline's TerraExplorer and ESRI's ArcGIS Explorer
ArcGIS Explorer
ArcGIS Explorer is a free 3D GIS viewer produced by Esri. It is a part of ArcGIS software suite. AGX can be used as a client for ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, ArcWeb Services and WMS. It supports many GIS file formats such as shapefile, GeoTIFF, MrSID, IMG and KML.Compare ArcExplorer.-External links:*...
has grown significantly as their functionality has improved and with the KML language
KML
KML or kml may refer to:* Kamileroi Airport , Queensland, Australia* Keyhole Markup Language, an XML geospatial data file format...
having become the de-facto standard for globe visualizations. Numerous examples can be viewed at the Google Earth Outreach Showcase and at World Wind Java Demo Applications and Applets
Sensor Networks
Geosensors are defined as "...any device receiving and measuring environmental stimuli that can be geographically referenced." Large scale networks of geosensors have been in place for many years, measuring Earth surface, hydrological and atmospheric phenomena. The advent of the Internet led to a large expansion of such networks, and we are now seeing efforts at linking them, such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Initiative led by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO)Group on Earth Observations
The Group on Earth Observations is coordinating international efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems . It is linking together existing and planned Earth observation systems and supporting the development of new ones where the need exists...
, an international partnership of 72 governments and the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
.
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)
The term Volunteered Geographic InformationVolunteered Geographic Information
Volunteered geographic information is the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals . Some examples of this phenomenon are Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap, and Google MyMaps...
was coined in 2007 by geographer Michael Goodchild, referring to the rapidly growing volume of social and scientific georeference
Georeference
To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...
d user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
being made available on the Web by both expert and non-expert individuals and groups. This phenomenon is seen as an emerging Geoweb
Geoweb
The Geospatial Web or Geoweb is a relatively new term that implies the merging of geographical information with the abstract information that currently dominates the Internet...
that provides Application Programming Interfaces (API's) to software developers and increasingly user-friendly web mapping software
Web mapping
Web mapping is the process of designing, implementing, generating and delivering maps on the World Wide Web and its product. While web mapping primarily deals with technological issues, web cartography additionally studies theoretic aspects: the use of web maps, the evaluation and optimization of...
to both scientists and the public at large.
International Symposia on Digital Earth (ISDE)
There have been six ISDE symposia and two Digital Earth Summits. Proceedings for many of them are available. The 7th Symposium will be held in Perth, Western Australia in 2011.{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
! 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
|-
| 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
|-
International Journal of Digital Earth
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.International Society for Digital Earth
This 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.Digital Earth Reference Model (DERM)
-
- Main article: Digital Earth Reference ModelDigital Earth Reference ModelThe term Digital Earth Reference Model 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...
- Main article: Digital Earth Reference Model
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. The Digital Earth reference model seeks to facilitate and promote the use of georeferenced information from multiple sources over the Internet.
A digital Earth reference model defines a fixed global reference frame for the Earth using four principles of a digital system
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
, namely:
-
- Discrete partitioning using regular or irregular cell mesh, tiling or GridGrid (spatial index)In the context of a spatial index, a grid is a regular tessellation of a manifold or 2-D surface that divides it into a series of contiguous cells, which can then be assigned unique identifiers and used for spatial indexing purposes...
; - Data acquisition using signal processing theory (samplingSampling (signal processing)In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous signal to a discrete signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of samples ....
and quantizingQuantization (signal processing)Quantization, in mathematics and digital signal processing, is the process of mapping a large set of input values to a smaller set – such as rounding values to some unit of precision. A device or algorithmic function that performs quantization is called a quantizer. The error introduced by...
) for assigning binary values from continuousContinuum (theory)Continuum theories or models explain variation as involving a gradual quantitative transition without abrupt changes or discontinuities. It can be contrasted with 'categorical' models which propose qualitatively different states.-In physics:...
analogAnalog signalAn analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
or other digital sources to the discrete cell partitions; - An ordering or naming of cells that can provide both unique spatial indexing and geographic location addressGeographic coordinate systemA geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on the Earth to be specified by a set of numbers. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represent vertical position, and two or three of the numbers represent horizontal position...
; - A set of mathematical operations built on the indexing for algebraic, geometric, Boolean and image processing transforms, etc.
- Discrete partitioning using regular or irregular cell mesh, tiling or Grid
The International Society for Digital Earth has a standing committee considering DERM implementations and standards which includes both the Earth reference frame and the ancillary requirements for metadata and attribute semantics.
United States
Technology developments that support the current Digital Earth technological framework can be traced to U.S. computing advances derived from the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
competition, the space race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
, and commercial innovations. Therefore, many innovations can be tracked to corporations working for the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
or NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
. 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
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
who proposed development of a GeoScope
Geoscope
-Introduction:The Geoscope was a proposal by Buckminster Fuller in 1962 to create a globe, which would be covered in colored lights so that it could function as a large spherical display...
half a century ago, analogous to a microscope to examine and improve our understanding of the planet Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
.
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). Attention to consensus development of standards, protocols and tools through cooperative test-bed
Testbed
A testbed is a platform for experimentation of large development projects. Testbeds allow for rigorous, transparent, and replicable testing of scientific theories, computational tools, and new technologies.The term is used across many disciplines to describe a development environment that is...
initiatives was the primary process for advancement of this initiative within the government community.
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 Earth Sciences
Earth science
Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
. This titular focus was considered necessary to help align over 17 government agencies and keep sustainability and Earth oriented applications as a guiding principle for the Digital Earth enterprise. Components for development of 3-D Earth graphic-user-interfaces (GUIs) were placed into various technological sectors to stimulate cooperative development support. While initially limited to government personnel, industry and academia were early observers attending IDEW workshops to discuss topics such as, visualization, information fusion
Information integration
Information integration is the merging of information from disparate sources with differing conceptual, contextual and typographical representations. It is used in data mining and consolidation of data from unstructured or semi-structured resources...
, standards and interoperability, advanced computational algorithms, digital libraries
Digital library
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
and museums. In March 2000, at a special IDEW meeting hosted by Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
in Herndon, Virginia
Herndon, Virginia
Herndon is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area of the United States. The population was 21,655 at the 2000 census, which makes it the largest of three towns in the county.-History:...
, industry representatives demonstrated several promising 3-D visualization prototypes. Within two years, these were captivating international audiences, including Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
and Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
, in government, business, science, and mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
who began to purchase the early commercial geo-browsers. Just as the spectacular Apollo photography of Earthrise provided an inspiring Earth-centric image for new generations to appreciate the fragility of our biosphere, the 3-D Digital Earths began inspiring growing numbers of people to the possibility of better understanding and possibly saving our planet. Introduction of satellite data into commercially accessible spatial toolboxes significantly advanced the capacity to map, monitor, and manage our planet’s resources and provide a unifying perspective on the Digital Earth vision.
After Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2000
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President....
, 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 International Symposium on Digital Earth in Beijing provided a venue for the extensive international support for implementing the Gore Digital Earth vision introduced a year earlier. A virtual explosion of Chinese Digital Earth projects and initiatives followed: hundreds of digital earth cities created by national, provincial, and municipal governments as well as universities. In China, Digital Earth became a metaphor for modernization and automation with computers, leading to its incorporation into a five-year modernization plan. Originating from China’s satellite remote sensingRemote sensing
Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon, without making physical contact with the object. In modern usage, the term generally refers to the use of aerial sensor technologies to detect and classify objects on Earth by means of propagated signals Remote sensing...
community, Digital Earth prowess spread to a range of applications including flood predictions, dust cloud modeling, environmental assessments, and city planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
. China has been omnipresent at all international Digital Earth conferences since and has recently founded the International Society for Digital Earth, one of the first NGOs created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...
. In 2009, the International Symposium on Digital Earth returned to Beijing for its 6th meeting.
United Nations
In 2000, the United Nations Environment ProgrammeUnited Nations Environment Programme
The United Nations Environment Programme coordinates United Nations environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and has its...
(UNEP) advanced the Digital Earth to enhance decision-makers' access to information for then Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
and the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...
. UNEP promoted use of web-based geospatial technologies with the ability to access the world’s environmental information, in association with economic and social policy
Social policy
Social policy primarily refers to guidelines, principles, legislation and activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare. Thus, social policy is that part of public policy that has to do with social issues...
issues. A reorganization of UNEP’s data and information resources was initiated in 2001, based on the GSDI/DE architecture for a network of distributed and interoperable databases creating a framework of linked servers. The design concept was based upon using a growing network of internet mapping software and database content with advanced capabilities to link GIS tools and applications. UNEP.net, launched in February 2001, provided UN staff with an unparalleled facility for accessing authoritative environmental data resources and a visible example to others in the UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
community. However, a universal user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
for UNEP.net, suitable for members of Security Council, that is non-scientists, did not exist. UNEP began actively testing prototypes for a UNEP geo-browser beginning in mid-2001 with a showcase for the African community displayed at the 5th African GIS Conference in Nairobi, Kenya
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
November 2001. Keyhole Technology, Inc. (later purchased in 2004 by Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and to become Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...
) was contracted to develop and demonstrate the first full globe 3-D interactive Digital Earth using web-stream data from a distributed database located on servers around the planet. A concerted effort within the UN community, via the Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG), followed immediately, including purchase of early Keyhole systems by 2002. UNEP provided further public demonstrations for this early Digital Earth system at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September, 2002 at Johannesburg, South Africa
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
. In seeking an engineering approach to system-wide development of the Digital Earth model, recommendations were made at the 3rd UNGIWG Meeting, June 2002, Washington, D.C. for creating a document on the Functional User Requirements for geo-browsers. This proposal was communicated to the ISDE Secretariat in Beijing and the organizing committee for the 3rd International Symposium on Digital Earth and agreement was reached by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...
-sponsored Secretariat to host the first of the two Digital Earth geo-browser meetings.
Japan
Japan, led by Keio UniversityKeio University
,abbreviated as Keio or Keidai , is a Japanese university located in Minato, Tokyo. It is known as the oldest institute of higher education in Japan. Founder Fukuzawa Yukichi originally established it as a school for Western studies in 1858 in Edo . It has eleven campuses in Tokyo and Kanagawa...
and JAXA, has also played a prominent international role in Digital Earth helping to create the Digital Asia Network with a secretariat located in Bangkok to promote regional cooperation and initiatives. The high-tech environment for Japanese society has been a powerful enabler for an impressive array of innovative advances using Digital Earth technology. Citizens in the Gifu Prefecture
Gifu Prefecture
is a prefecture located in the Chūbu region of central Japan. Its capital is the city of Gifu.Located in the center of Japan, it has long played an important part as the crossroads of Japan, connecting the east to the west through such routes as the Nakasendō...
are uploading information directly into community-scale Digital Earth programs uplinked from their camera-cell phones on topics ranging from first sightings of fire-flies in spring to location of blocked handicap access ramps. Applications of the Japanese Digital Earth initiatives range from the use of the world’s largest super-computer for modeling climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
to citizen-participatory risk assessment
Risk assessment
Risk assessment is a step in a risk management procedure. Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat...
in planning for the permanent disposal of radioactive nuclear waste