Digital Earth: Bridging the Scales from Global to Local for Sustainable Development

Digital Earth is a virtual representation of the planet, an information system with tremendous amount of multi-resolution and multi-scale data as shown in multiple dimensions. By acquiring the large amount of data of the Earth, and utilizing the techniques of computer, image and graphic processing, network, virtual reality and so on to study the real earth and its relevant phenomena in digital way, the Digital Earth provides us a brand-new view to see our world. Sustainable development is a major issue to be addressed in the goals and activities of the International Society on Digital Earth, which will be established very soon. The Digital Earth activities, to date, have already focused on sustainable development in the past three International Symposiums on Digital Earth, especially the third one addressing Information Resources on Global Sustainability. Regarding our views of the Earth from global to local scales, earth observation technology plays a key role in building the Digital Earth, providing huge amount of spatial information data of various resolutions and scales about our earth for sustainable development. Based on spatial information data, we have built a Digital Earth prototype system, which bridges the scales from global to local, and demonstrates its applications in crop growth monitoring, disaster, digital archaeology, environment management, and digital city etc. The development of Digital Earth will significantly contribute to global sustainable development, and better bridge the scales from global to local for assessment of environment and other related subjects.