The 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth - Bringing Digital Earth down to Earth.

International Society for Digital Earth

In an unprecedented move by the Chinese government, a non-profit entity from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was created to host the international secretariat that would help with governance and promotion of the International Symposium on Digital Earth.  The inaugural International Society for Digital Earth meeting was held May 21-22, 2006 in Beijing attended to by the President of the Chinese Academy of Science, Dr. Lu and the Chinese Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr. Xu, along with 16 renowned international experts .  This historic meeting marks the creation of the first sustained international governance organization supporting the Digital Earth vision.

The name of the newly formed organization is the "International Society for Digital Earth”, hereafter referred to as ISDE. ISDE is a non-political, non-governmental and not-for-profit international organization founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Definition and Purpose

Digital Earth is a virtual representation of the planet, encompassing all its systems and forms, including human societies, manifested as a multi-dimensional, multi-scale, multi-temporal, and multi-layer information facility. The Digital Earth vision incorporates a digital-formatted Earth, as a functional interfacing metaphor, whereby a corresponding virtual body of knowledge of the real Earth and its digital representation for understanding the oneness of the Earth and its relevant phenomena.

Digital Earth has its corresponding theoretical, technological, science, engineering, and application systems, which are fully integrated as necessary to support national and international cooperation for world sustainable development, and a newly growing point of economic construction and social welfare.

The purpose of ISDE is to promote international cooperation on the Digital Earth vision, and enable the Digital Earth technology to play key roles inter alias, in economic and social sustainable development, environmental protection, disaster mitigation, natural resources conservation and improvement of human beings’ living standard.

Activities

The major activities of ISDE are to provide an international platform:

• Organizing the “International Symposium on Digital Earth” series and relevant Digital Earth meetings.

• Publishing the society’s newsletter, proceedings, journals and other publications to further a global understanding of the Earth’s integrated systems, history, and challenges for the future.

• Promoting new technologies for access and use of Digital Earth and stimulate new achievements on utilizing Digital Earth.

• Raising awareness and influencing policy decisions by means of media and other communication technologies.

• Coordinating with other relevant organization’s, and providing technical advisory, education and training for all countries.

• Administrating the Society and interacting with its Members.

Headquarters

The secretariat is headquartered in Beijing, and the ISDE is registered in the Peoples’ Republic of China under the not-for-profit statutes of China.

Membership

Membership shall be opened to all persons, institutions, universities, and organizations who agree to abide by and accept the bylaws of the Society. After application being approved by the Executive Committee (EC) of ISDE and the appropriate membership fees are paid, the applicant becomes a registered member. Membership will be publicly acknowledged through the ISDE Web site. The annual dues rate shall be approved by a majority vote of the EC as needed to meet the financial needs for operating the Society.  Dues shall be payable on a calendar year basis, and only people who pay dues shall be listed as registered members of the Society.

•     Individual Membership – individuals, actively engaged in supporting ISDE through community activities, applications, publications, or research.

•     Student Members – students actively enrolled in an education program

•     NGO Membership – non-governmental organizations who are actively engaged in the promotion, use, and communication of ISDE research and applications.

•     Corporate membership - institutions, companies, and organizations involved in digital earth research and applications.

•     Founding Membership – those individuals who were actively involved in the foundation of the Society are regarded as Founding Members.

•     Life Membership – Life Membership is awarded to distinguished scholars, political leaders, and citizens who have obtained special recognition for their outstanding contributions to the Digital Earth Vision.

(Note: membership fee will be decided by the Executive Committee of ISDE)

Members attending inaugural meeting 21 May 2006:
Chen Shupeng, Professor of Geoinformatics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
David Rhind, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, The City University, London, UK
Tim Foresman, President of International Center for Remote Sensing Education, USA
Lu Yongxiang, President of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Xu Guanhua, Minister of Ministry of Science and Technology, China
Werner Alpers, Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg, Germany
John van Genderen, Department of Earth Observation Science, ITC, The Netherlands
Peter Woodgate, CEO Cooperative Research Center for Spatial Information, Australia
Guo Huadong, Professor, Institute for Remote Sensing Applications, China
Richard Simpson, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Hiromichi Fukui, Director Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, Keio University, Japan
Fred Campbell, International Program Consultant, Canada
Marc D’Iorio, Director General, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, Canada
Milan Konecny, Professor, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Mario Hernandez, Chief Information Management & Remote Sensing Unit, UNESCO
Armin Gruen, Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, Switzerland
Jean Sequeira, Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Marseille, France
Chen Yuntai, Professor,  Institute of Geophysics, State Seismological Bureau, China

Inaugural Speech by Dr. Lu Yongxiang, First President of the ISDE.

Speech on the Unveiling Ceremony of ISDE
May 21, 2006, Beijing
By Prof. Dr.-Ing LU Yongxiang

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.

Ever since the first international symposium on digital earth held in 1999 in Beijing, which I was personally involved as the chairman of the international steering committee, I have been expecting that research on digital earth could have a healthy and sustainable development.

In the past 7 years, I am greatly relieved and pleased to notice that digital earth concept is making its continua progress worldwide. The success of the 1st international symposium in Beijing, and the following symposiums in Canada, Czech Republic and Japan in every 2 years, and the 5th international symposium on digital earth which is to be held in 2007 in US, have all reflect the dynamic and vigorous development of digital earth.

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.

In the past 2 days, we had our first Executive committee meeting of ISDE. In the meeting, the committee confirmed the organization structure of ISDE, endorsed the statues of ISDE and discussed ISDE future development plan. After nearly 5 years incubation, ISDE, an international society of scientists and academic institutions of digital earth research all over the world, has stood up on stage.

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.

On the occasion of the First EC Meeting of ISDE and the Unveiling Ceremony of ISDE, the Chinese National Committee for ISDE (or CNISDE) also declares its founding.

The Chinese government issued the Guidelines for the National Plan of Medium and Long-term Scientific and Technological Development in the beginning of this year, with digital and information technologies much highlighted. The newly publicized the National Strategies of Informatization from 2006 to 2020 points out that as the overall trend of today’s global development, informatization is one of the main forces of social development. Both documents have clearly demonstrated the willingness and attention of Chinese government to promote the informatization and digitalization. We are thus strongly convinced that CNISDE will make great contribution to the development of Digital Earth both within China and throughout the world, through successful collaboration with ISDE.

A World Digital Earth Forum will be held tomorrow, with 11 high level presentations in this field given by eminent experts from 11 countries, making another good chance for global digital earth communication. Hereby I’d like to express my warmest thankfulness to all of them and wish the forum a great success.

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