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As the founding President of International Society of Digital Earth, I would like to extend my welcome to you for joining us to witness the special and important event of ISDE in its development.
Scientists from more than 10 nations are gathering together today, to celebrate the formal launch of International Society of Digital Earth and establishment of its Executive Committee, to discuss the responsibility of scientists in the field and design the future of ISDE.
The earth is the only planet that human beings are relying on, thus it is the common responsibility of the whole human being to explore and utilize the resources on the earth rationally and protect the eco-environment.
But, people start to find that years after the industrial revolution, the supply of natural resources and energy, the base of the modern civilization is facing crisis. Eco-environment is deteriorating suffered from human and nature conducts, a series of global and regional major issues are threatening the living and sustainable development of human being.
In order to study and find solutions to those key issues related to our earth, many countries in the world are actively developing and utilizing advanced technology, including digital format acquisition, processing, analysis, and application of geographical spatial data related to nature and human factors as well as strategic information resources of great social benefit and sharing. Digital Earth, which is an information Earth, is formed by integrating voluminous, multi-resolution, three dimensional and dynamic data of the earth in grid format. With this Digital Earth, we can get to know information about the earth speedy and visually, and based on this to put forward solutions of scientific proposal and technological measurement to the earth problems.
The coming of the era of information and knowledge based economy is changing the people's way of living quietly but dramatically, the future human development is closely related to digits and information in every possible sense. It is reasonable to believe that digital earth is significantly important to sustainable development of human society, improvement of life quality and advancement of S&T. ISDE is born as a valuable endeavor of the world academic community to face the challenge. We have every reason to expect ISDE to make its own unique contribution to the development of digital earth.
The International Society of Digital Earth, a new name in the international academic organization community, a new family for world digital earth professionals, now makes his fist steps. I'd like to take this occasion to express my gratitude to all those made contribution to digital earth and the founding of ISDE. With a sense of responsibility and remarkable performance, ISDE will be working unremittingly to provide a prefect platform for digital earth professionals in the world, to build up a virtual digital earth for human being and finally serve the harmonious and sustainable development of the world. | 
