On July 8th, a special session on digital earth of the ISPRS conference, entitled "Digital Earth: Status and Trends" was held successfully at the Beijing Conventional Center. This session attracted more than 150 delegates attended. Prof. Guo Huadong, Secretary General of the International Society for Digital Earth, and Director General of the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth of the Chinese Academy of Sciences presided the session. Invited speakers from Japan, Australia, USA, Germany and China gave talks on the progress of their research in relation to Digital Earth. Prof. Hiromichi Fukui from Keio University of Japan introduced Digital Asia project based on Digital Earth Constructs. Dr. Peter Woodgate from Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information outlines the current strategy of Australia on shaping its strategy for spatial information research for the next decade. Dr. Vincent Tao from Microsoft addressed the impact of the location to the IT industry, the impact of the on-line mapping innovations to the digital earth vision and the impact of the emerging location based services to user communities. Dr. Wu Duan, on behalf of his colleague from Hansa Luftbild German Air Surveys, Sensors and Photogrammetry, gave a presentation "Trends in Digital Photogrammetry from an International Enterprise Perspective", and Prof. Guo Huadong introduced the Digital Earth Science Platform to be constructed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and made an announcement for the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth to be held from September 9 to 12, 2009 in Beijing.

After the Digital Earth session, Taylor & Francis, the Publisher of the International Journal of Digital Earth, hosted a drink reception. Ms. Rachel Sangster introduced the Journal and encouraged the audiences to submit paper. Prof. Manfred Ehlers invited audiences to attend the Digital Earth summit to be held in Potsdam from Nov. 12 to 14, 2008. Delegates took this opportunity to have a more widely communication on digital earth, the journal etc. The Digital Earth session was convened successfully.

ISDE Secretariat