Symposium
On August 23rd-25th, 2011, the 7th International Symposium on Digital Earth themed “The Knowledge Generation” was held in Perth, Australia, by joining the forces of ISDE (International Society for Digital Earth), the WALIS (Western Australian Land Information System) Forum and the WA NRM (Natural Resource Management) Office. Over 800 experts in the fields of Digital Earth, land information, and natural resources from around the world shared their latest findings to explain the Digital Earth concept, global change, natural resource management, and information technology in 22 streams, 16 keynote speeches and more than 100 research reports.
The new ISDE President Prof. John Richards announced the Digital Earth Vision to 2020 in the opening ceremony.“From the very solid foundation provided during Professor Lu's Presidency we now enter the next phase of development of ISDE, commencing with the launch of the Digital Earth Vision 2020 in Perth this August.” The Digital Earth Vision 2020 was finally launched after more than 6 months of discussions from Digital Earth scientists worldwide. The new vision pointed out what Digital Earth might be in the future and will lead new development of the Digital Earth concept, research and applications. He also explained, “The Digital Earth Vision 2020 will act as the geographical framework on which to build solutions to physical, social and cultural problems, with functionalities of satisfactory metric accuracy, inclusion of underground and underwater data, historical and time predictive models, data archiving, dynamic and interactive, improved access to current and historical data and information, incorporation of inherently non-visual data, metadata on quality, trust and uncertainty, participative in data provision, analysis and debate, includes information on place, culture, identity and networks, development is driven by application demand, and easy and fun to use.”
