This 4th bi-annual Digital Earth Summit was held in Wellington, New Zealand from 2 to 4 September, which is one of the series of summit organized by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) in 2012. The summit with theme “Digital Earth and Technology” was co-hosted by Wellington City Council and Land Information New Zealand. The three work streams in terms of the Digital environment, Resilient cities and Growing up digital have been carried out. There are 15 keynote speeches and 75 presentations, attracting around 200 delegates from more than 20 countries.
A Maori welcome party started the opening ceremony. The executive committee member of the ISDE received a Maori traditional reception. ISDE president Prof. John Richards and Mayor of Wellington City Ms. Celia Wade-Brown gave their summit opening remarks. In the Mayor’s speech Digital Earth technologies are expected to facilitate Wellington to build a creative digital capital.
"Platial Technology such as place-base GIS rather than co-ordinate-GIS will be one of the key Digital Earth drivers.” keynote speech by Dr. Peter Woodgate, Executive Committee member of the ISDE and CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, Australia. John Richards gave a presentation entitled “Knowledge propagation in the Digital Earth Framework”, which illustrated the Digital Earth framework of transforming and developing knowledge theoretically and technically. “Digital Earth can take advantages of its fast developing technologies to participant in the Future Earth, a 10-year international research initiative of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and other international organizations”. Said by Prof. GUO Huadong, Secretariat General of the ISDE in his keynote speech of “Digital Earth for Future Earth”. In the afternoon panel sessions of the 3 days, hot discussions were made on Digital environment, Resilient cities and Growing up digital, with youth engagement to present their views on digital earth technologies and their future development. At the closing ceremony, Prof. GUO Huadong made remarks for the success of Digital Earth summit in Wellington, and handed over the flag of Digital Earth Summit to next hosting country, Japan.
On 1 September, the 7th Executive Committee meeting of the ISDE, having 13 EC members participating, discussed the modification of changes of statutes and bylaws, Aims & Scope of the International Journal of Digital Earth, following steps to implement Digital Earth Vision 2020, the preparation report of the 8th International Symposium of Digital Earth and the application of hosting the 5th Digital Earth summit in Nagoya, Japan in 2014.
Back to August 2006, the first Digital Earth Summit was convened in New Zealand with theme “Digital Earth Summit on Sustainability”. At that summit we saw how digital tools and information to inform sustainable development. Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, pointed out that the government, universities, industry, and citizen groups are acutely aware of the looming threats to their quality of life from global climate change, decreasing biodiversity, dependence upon a fossil-fuel economy, and the myriad impacts of these dynamics on social harmony and quality of life at that summit. Six years later, the deployment of technology and bold new digital earth vision in the face of problems of the earth has truly changed the way we look at the earth and yielded many benefits. The 2012 Digital Earth Summit continues to unfold an international Digital Earth platform to bear in advancing humanitarian efforts and social development, to scale up programmers and drive innovations and to establish international collaborations for creating the future of Digital Earth worldwide.
7th Executive Committee Meeting of the ISDE
Exhibition booth of the ISDE
Opening Ceremony of the summit
Delegations of the Summit
Prof. John Richards’s keynote speech “Knowledge Propagation in the Digital Earth Framework”
Hand over flag of DE summit to next organizer, Japan.