Digital Earth

On Friday June 8th I had the pleasure of attending the International Symposium on Digital Earth, held this year for the first time in the U.S. on the UC Berkeley campus.

A new wave of technological innovation (using GIS tools like Google Earth, Microsoft's Virtual Earth, ESRI's ArcGIS Explorer and GeoFusion) means that we can now view the complexity of our planet at any specific location on the Earth's surface. Launched during a speech in 1998 by former United States Vice President Al Gore (yes, THAT Al Gore!), Digital Earth is a "global initiative aimed at harnessing the world's data and information resources to develop a virtual 3-D model of Earth in order to monitor, measure, and forecast natural and human activity on the planet."

Pioneered within NASA in the late 1990's and formalized by the Beijing Declaration, the Digital Earth movement is increasingly being seen as the major scientific integration project of the 21st century. Built upon and integrated with World Wide Web technologies and protocols, the development of the Digital Earth project is "involving the grassroots efforts of many individuals, companies, university researchers and government organizations. In creating the Digital Commons, the Digital Earth initiative will provide for a vast digital marketplace where citizens can access both free and commercial information and services."

When you see the acronym GIS, short for Geographical Information Systems, these are the combined technologies used to monitor and measure the data coming from satellites as well as a host of other geographic and atmospheric measuring devices in, on and above the Earth. GPS (Geographic Positioning Systems), like those used in some cars to help you find your way around, also use GIS data. A planet-wide system of sharing GIS data, and even the computational power of thousands of computers (including some super computers) needed to process it, is already partially built and in the process of being connected.

One of the truly remarkable things about the Digital Earth movement is that most of the architecture used to serve up the information, along with the data itself, is open source, meaning that most of the GIS information being obtained and cataloged worldwide will be available to anyone. Some of this information is necessarily protected for national security reasons, but most will be available to anyone, worldwide, wishing to study and use it. And this will allow and foster endless opportunities for research and education on the university, high school and even elementary level, as well as allowing NGO's (non governmental organizations), governments and even individuals to view, repackage and market the data in exciting new ways (such as is being done with Google Earth).

Environmental organizations are also now using GIS data to track deforestation in the Amazon Rain Forest, show the amount of mountaintop removal being done by Coal companies in Tennessee, or track the loss of ice at the North and South poles. GIS is an exploding field and thousands of jobs are now going begging due to a shortage of trained GIS researchers. If you know of someone looking for a field with great, exciting opportunities that would also enable them to make a real contribution to building a more sustainable human ecosystem, tell them about GIS and the Digital Earth movement.