The Economic Value of Digital Earth

In this chapter, we approach the economic value of Digital Earth with a broad definition of economic value, i.e., the measure of benefits from goods or services to an economic agent and the trade-offs the agent makes in view of scarce resources. The concept of Digital Earth has several components: data, models, technology and infrastructure. We focus on Earth Observation (EO) data because this component has been undergoing the most dramatic change since the beginning of this century. We review the available recent studies to assess the value of EO/geospatial/open data and related infrastructures and identify three main sets of approaches focusing on the value of information, the economic approach to the value of EO to the economy from both macro- and microeconomic perspectives, and a third set that aims to maximize value through infrastructure and policy. We conclude that the economic value of Digital Earth critically depends on the perspective: the value for whom, what purpose, and when. This multiplicity is not a bad thing: it acknowledges that Digital Earth is a global concept in which everyone can recognize their viewpoint and collaborate with others to increase the common good.

Digital Heritage

Natural and cultural heritage, the common wealth of human beings, are keys to human understanding of the evolution of our planet and social development. The protection and conservation of natural and cultural heritage is the common responsibility of all mankind. Spatial information technology provides a new applied theory and tool for the protection and utilization of natural and cultural heritage. This chapter is divided into four parts. The first part elaborates the connotation of digital heritage, the differences and connections between digital heritage and physical heritage, the technology of digital heritage formation and the research objectives and content of digital heritage. Parts 2 and 3 discuss the contents and methods of digital natural heritage and cultural heritage, respectively, and some practical case studies. In the fourth part, the future development trends of digital heritage research in protection and utilization are described, as well as six research directions that deserve attention.

Citizen Science in Support of Digital Earth

Citizen science can be thought of as a tremendous catalyst for making Digital Earth a participation model of our world. This chapter presents a wide overview of the concept and practice of citizen science in terms of the technologies and social impact. Definitions of citizen science and various existing approaches to citizen involvement are described, from simple contributions to projects proposed by someone else to the design and planning of science as a bottom-up process. To illustrate these concepts, the relevant example of OpenStreetMap is described in detail, and other examples are mentioned and briefly discussed. Social innovation connected with citizen science is focused on to highlight different levels of direct citizen contributions to scientific research and indirect effects on academia, and studies driven by new questions that may support responsible research and innovation (RRI), governments and public administration in making better informed decisions. Despite its growth and success in relatively few years, citizen science has not fully overcome a number of persistent challenges related to quality, equity, inclusion, and governance. These themes and related complex facets are discussed in detail in the last section of the chapter.

Digital Earth Ethics

Digital Earth scholars have recently argued for a code of ethics to protect individuals’ location privacy and human dignity. In this chapter, we contribute to the debate in two ways. First, we focus on (geo)privacy because information about an individual’s location is substantially different from other personal information. The compound word (geo)privacy suggests that location can be inferred from people’s interests, activities, and sociodemographics, not only from traditional geographic coordinates. (Geo)privacy is a claim of individuals to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent location information about them is communicated to others. Second, we take an interdisciplinary perspective. We draw from (geo)computing to describe the transformation of volunteered, observed, and inferred information and suggest privacy-preserving measures. We also draw from organization studies to dissect privacy into ideal types of social relationships and privacy-preserving strategies. We take the point of view of Alice, an individual ‘data subject’ encountered in data protection legislation, and suggest ways to account for privacy as a sociocultural phenomenon in the future. Although most of the discussion refers to the EU and the US, we provide a brief overview of data protection legislation on the African continent and in China as well as various global and regional ethics guidelines that are of very recent vintage.

Digital Earth in China

In the promotion of economic digitalization as an important force driving the realization of development through innovation, countries around the world have made forward-looking arrangements in frontier technology research and development, open data for sharing, privacy security protection, and personnel training. China also attaches great importance to the development of Digital Earth technologies and applications. In this chapter, we introduce the development of Digital Earth in China in recent years and provide readers a broad overview of Digital Earth technologies and applications in China.

Digital Earth in Russia

A brief overview of the history of Digital Earth in Russia, its current status and prospects for further development are proposed and discussed in this chapter. The anticipation of the concept of Digital Earth in Russian culture is demonstrated and explained. Conclusions about the specificity of the development of the concept of Digital Earth in Russia due to its geographical, historical and cultural characteristics are drawn, and development factors are revealed. The vital need for the concept in ensuring the effective governance and sustainable development of the country is emphasized. Theoretical and applied results achieved by the Russian Digital Earth community are presented. Special attention is paid to the outreach of the Digital Earth vision to state governance, business, society and education. The key importance of international cooperation for the successful implementation of Digital Earth in Russia is explained.

Social Media and Social Awareness

The human behaviors and interactions on social media have maintained themselves as highly dynamic real-time social systems representing individual social awareness at fine spatial, temporal, and digital resolutions. In this chapter, we introduce the opportunities and challenges that human dynamics-centered social media bring to Digital Earth. We review the information diffusion of social media, the multi-faced implications of social media, and some real-world cases. Social media, on one hand, has facilitated the prediction of human dynamics in a wide spectrum of aspects, including public health, emergency response, decision making, and social equity promotion, and will also bring unintended challenges for Digital Earth, such as rumors and location spoofing on the other. Considering the multifaceted implications, this chapter calls for GIScientists to raise their awareness of the complex impacts of social media, to model the geographies of social media, and to understand ourselves as a unique species living both on the Earth and in Digital Earth.

Geospatial Information Infrastructures

Geospatial information infrastructures (GIIs) provide the technological, semantic, organizational and legal structure that allow for the discovery, sharing, and use of geospatial information (GI). In this chapter, we introduce the overall concept and surrounding notions such as geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data infrastructures (SDI). We outline the history of GIIs in terms of the organizational and technological developments as well as the current state-of-art, and reflect on some of the central challenges and possible future trajectories. We focus on the tension between increased needs for standardization and the ever-accelerating technological changes. We conclude that GIIs evolved as a strong underpinning contribution to implementation of the Digital Earth vision. In the future, these infrastructures are challenged to become flexible and robust enough to absorb and embrace technological transformations and the accompanying societal and organizational implications. With this contribution, we present the reader a comprehensive overview of the field and a solid basis for reflections about future developments.

Digital Earth for Climate Change Research

Our planet is undergoing one of the most rapid climate changes in Earth’s history. The current change is particularly significant because it is most likely a consequence of human activities since the 19th century. The Digital Earth platform, which includes Earth-orbiting satellites, ground-based observations, and other technologies for collecting, analyzing and visualizing data, has enabled scientists to see our climate and its impacts at regional and global scales. The Digital Earth platform offers valuable information on the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere to understand Earth’s past and present, and it supports Earth system models for climate prediction and projection. This chapter gives an overview of the advances in climate change studies based on Digital Earth and provides case studies that utilize Digital Earth in climate change research, such as in the observation of sensitive factors for climate change, global environmental change information and simulation systems, and synchronous satellite-aerial-ground observation experiments, which provide extremely large and abundant datasets. The mapping of climate extremes and impacts improves preparedness for climate change-related risks and provides robust evidence to support climate risk management and climate change adaptation for the public, decision makers, investors, and vulnerable communities. However, Digital Earth faces the challenges of multisource data coordination and integration, requiring international partnerships between governments and other organizations to advance open data policies and practices.

Geospatial Information Processing Technologies

The increasing availability of geospatial data offers great opportunities for advancing scientific discovery and practices in society. Effective and efficient processing of geospatial data is essential for a wide range of Digital Earth applications such as climate change, natural hazard prediction and mitigation, and public health. However, the massive volume, heterogeneous, and distributed nature of global geospatial data pose challenges in geospatial information processing and computing. This chapter introduces three technologies for geospatial data processing: high-performance computing, online geoprocessing, and distributed geoprocessing, with each technology addressing one aspect of the challenges. The fundamental concepts, principles, and key techniques of the three technologies are elaborated in detail, followed by examples of applications and research directions in the context of Digital Earth. Lastly, a Digital Earth reference framework called discrete global grid system (DGGS) is discussed.