The working group of Digital Earth Vision 2020, including seventeen Digital Earth scientists from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, and the USA, was organized by the Centre for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the International Society of Digital Earth (ISDE) in March 2011. One of the significant outputs is a paper entitled “Next-Generation Digital Earth” being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on 21 June 2012. The Next-Generation Digital Earth, considered as a milestone in Digital Earth’s history, contributes new thinking of the Digital Earth through PNAS and will lead new findings being discovered worldwide.
The paper, meant to be an update of the Digital Earth vision given by Al Gore over ten years ago, introduced many Digital Earth implementations which have further accelerated the fulfilment of the Digital Earth concept and expanded of what Digital Earth can be. It explored what is the model of the next generation Digital Earth and the potential research fields. It also addressed the importance of international cooperation by organisations such as the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), International Society of Digital Earth (ISDE)， the International Council for Science and its Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA, ICSU), the UN Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management, and the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI), etc. Their collaborations can play a helpful role in endorsing the concept of a next-generation Digital Earth and elaborating its vision.
Since the Digital Earth concept was put forth in the 1990s, research on Digital Earth has been given great attention internationally. A series of international symposia and summits on Digital Earth were held by the International Society of Digital Earth founded in China, and two Digital Earth declarations in 1999 and 2009 were produced from the proceedings of these meetings. The first international journal（International Journal of Digital Earth）focusing on scientific Digital Earth research was inaugurated in 2008 and then included in Science Citation Index Expanded. CEODE and ISDE are now playing a significant role in Digital Earth research and applications worldwide. Accompanied by the new Digital Earth vision, they will continue to work to promote Digital Earth through implementing specific Digital Earth research, diversifying Digital Earth applications and carrying out more international cooperation.
