ISDE6 Ends Successfully-Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth’ 2009 promulgated

On Sep 12th, the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE6), lasting 4 days, comes to an end successfully in the afternoon. More than 500 participants have attended the closing ceremony and adopted the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth’ 2009 – a programmatic document intended for a new stage of developing the Digital Earth.

Handover of the ISDE flag

The Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth’ 2009 was fully adopted at the conference, loud in praise of the worldwide accomplishments attained in Digital Earth. The Declaration said that development of human society is confronted with drastic challenges from lack of resources, shortage of energies, environmental deterioration, frequent disasters, population explosion and especially global change. In response to these challenges, Digital Earth, as a controlling height and global strategic goal of contemporary technical development, shall integrate and further enhance the earth observation technology, geographic information system, GPS, network communication technology, virtual reality technology, grid computing technology and Earth information science. The Declaration called on the strengthened capability to share Digital Earth information resources, the unity and synthesis of government sectors, scientific and educational circles and enterprises to narrow digital divide, reinforce information sharing and draw attention from human society to development and future of Digital Earth.

Group photo of the ISDE6 staff

The prizes (i.e."Best Youth Presentations" and "Excellent Poster Presentations") were elected at the meeting and won respectively by Claudia Spinetti, Jan Kolá?, Chin-Te Jung, Johannes Reiche and Liming Jiang, Liping Lei, Zhen-hua Lv, Yanju Hao, Wei Tang and Rajabpour Manijeh.

Upon the decision at the Executive Committee meeting of the International Society for Digital Earth, Australia won the bid and will host the 7th International Symposium on Digital Earth in 2011 in Perth. At the closing ceremony, the handover ceremony of the flag was held between China and Australia.
On behalf of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Digital Earth, vice chairman Milan Konecny extended thanks in his speech to ISDE6 organizers for their hard work, to experts and scholars from all over the world and congratulated on the great success of ISDE6.

Prof. Guo Huadong, chairman of ISDE6 Organizing Committee, gave a summative speech. On behalf of ISDE6 Organizing Committee, Prof. Guo expressed gratitude to representatives for actively participating in the conference, staff and volunteers for their efforts and contributions; he affirmed success in this convention, saying that it was “a cohesive and appealing meeting of sciences”, “a united and sharing meeting of sciences”, “an attractive and international meeting of sciences” and “a successful and significant meeting of sciences”. He also said that the international exchange and cooperation in Digital Earth theory, technology and applications were greatly strengthened through symposium and communication in this regard. At the same time, promulgation of Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth 2009 indicated the future development and application goals of Digital Earth and deepened research on Digital Earth in terms of global change and sustainable development so as to enhance Digital Earth’s important roles in sustainable development of national economy and society, environmental protection, disaster control and protection of natural resources and world heritage.

The Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth’ 2009 fully adopted

The 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE6) with the theme of “Digital Earth in Action” was hosted by International Society for Digital Earth and Chinese Academy of Sciences, organized by Chinese National Committee of International Society for Digital Earth and Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth Science, CAS and jointly held by 19 ministries and committees and international organizations including Beijing Municipal Government, Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Land and Resources. More than 1000 scholars, enterprises and managerial experts from 40-odd countries have attended the conference that produces 200 abstracts of papers, 700 papers in full text and comprises 6 oral presentations by 25 person times, 25 oral presentations at parallel sessions by 190 experts as well as 400 poster papers in 5 reports; the “Digital Earth Science and Technology Contribution Award ”, “Digital Earth Enterprises Contribution Award” and “Award for Organizing International Symposium on Digital Earth” are released at the meeting; the Exhibition of Digital Earth technology and applications is held during the meeting, where 22 companies and 18 scientific research institutions have displayed the latest technologies and service in the relative fields of Digital Earth. By further research and exchange of Digital Earth theory, technology and applications, the ISDE6 will exert important and positive effects on awareness of Digital Earth’s roles in global change and promotion of Digital Earth’s service for human survival and development.