Digital earth:yesterday,today,and tomorrow

The concept of Digital Earth(DE)was formalized by Al Gore in 1998.At that time the technologies needed for its implementation were in an embryonic stage and the concept was quite visionary.Since then digital technologies have progressed significantly and their speed and pervasiveness have generated and are still causing the digital transformation of our society.This creates new opportunities and challenges for the realization of DE.‘What is DE today?’,‘What could DE be in the future?’,and‘What is needed to make DE a reality?’.To answer these questions it is necessary to examine DE considering all the technological,scientific,social,and economic aspects,but also bearing in mind the principles that inspired its formulation.By understanding the lessons learned from the past,it becomes possible to identify the remaining scientific and technological challenges,and the actions needed to achieve the ultimate goal of a‘Digital Earth for all’.This article reviews the evolution of the DE vision and its multiple definitions,illustrates what has been achieved so far,explains the impact of digital transformation,illustrates the new vision,and concludes with possible future scenarios and recommended actions to facilitate full DE implementation.

Big Earth Data:a new challenge and opportunity for Digital Earth’s development

Digital Earth has seen great progress during the last 19 years.When it entered into the era of big data,Digital Earth developed into a new stage,namely one characterized by‘Big Earth Data’,confronting new challenges and opportunities.In this paper we give an overview of the development of Digital Earth by summarizing research achievements and marking the milestones of Digital Earth’s development.Then,the opportunities and challenges that Big Earth Data faces are discussed.As a data-intensive scientific research approach,Big Earth Data provides a new vision and methodology to Earth sciences,and the paper identifies the advantages of Big Earth Data to scientific research,especially in knowledge discovery and global change research.We believe that Big Earth Data will advance and promote the development of Digital Earth.

A digital earth platform for sustainability

Based on the experience of the International Society for Digital Earth(ISDE),this paper describes some challenges foreseen in order to develop a Digital Earth platform that can support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.The use of ready-to-use derived geospatial information is essential.Future Earth’s methodology of‘co-design’aims to bring together natural,social scientists and decision makers to plan and carry out research for sustainability.Sustainability implies transdisciplinary research,but in order for scientists of different disciplines to work together,they will need to be able to share,access and use common data.This is by far not simple!While the good will to share data might exist,the associated technological,ethical and privacy issues are difficult to solve.An adequate e-infrastructure will be required.ISDE could consider to use the SDGs is the basis to develop the desired Digital Earth platform.This paper,by no means,covers everything for a Digital Earth platform,it aims to trigger research discussions and to have a good view about a starting point.

Space technology:A powerful tool for safeguarding world heritage

WORLD HERITAGE AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage(WHC),adopted by United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO)on November 16,1972,aims to ensure the identification,protection,conservation,presentation,and transmission to future generations of the world’s cultural and natural heritage.The WHC works toward these goals by emphasizing the Outstanding Universal Value(OUV)of heritage sites and the unique contribution such places can make to conservation and human development agendas.1 As of the end of January 2023,theWHC has been signed by 194 state parties,covering 1,157 sites(including 900 cultural,218 natural,and 39 mixed properties),55 of which are considered to be in danger.These sites,totaling an area of more than 370 million hectares are designated as World Heritage(WH)sites(https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/).WH sites have played a significant role in the sustainable development of society globally and helped effectively maintain and preserve the cultural diversity and global biodiversity of the Earth.

Foreword

Human beings have only one planet Earth, but who can say one knows the Earth quitewell? Since the start of civilization, people began to try to understand, adapt andmodify our own planet -the Earth. While we are still learning about the planet wherewe live, it becomes apparent that we increasingly need more and more informationrelating to our daily life, including natural, human, geospatial and social strategyinformation. With such a massive database of the Earth*terrestrial, oceanic, airborne and space-borne data*it becomes necessary to find an effective way to combineall this information together to encompass the globe. This is really an incrediblechallenge, because the information is exceedingly huge. In the meantime, it covers awide spectrum of disciplines, including remote sensing, GIS, GPS, and computerscience, virtual reality and so on. Therefore, the integration and application of geoinformation is an extremely complicated scientific and technical system. No singleindividual, or research institute, or even a country could complete it independently。