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Is Google Earth, “Digital Earth?”—Defining a Vision

Karl Grossner-2008-08-13
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Abstract. The recent wave of interest in the geographic referencing of information and in geographic displays generally, highlighted by the mid-2005 release of the Google Earth “geobrowser, ” suggests the time is right to revisit the vision of a “Digital Earth ” project proposed in 1998 by then US Vice-President Al Gore. Digital Earth was an ambitious global undertaking to build a multi-faceted computing system for education and research. I present a short history of the federal Digital Earth Initiative that followed the speech and the related, ongoing activities world-wide. I describe the Digital Earth vision, contrast it with Google Earth, and report on research aimed at defining a digital earth system in the terms of both a digital geolibrary and a proposed comprehensive digital historical atlas.

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Abstract. The recent wave of interest in the geographic referencing of information and in geographic displays generally, highlighted by the mid-2005 release of the Google Earth “geobrowser, ” suggests the time is right to revisit the vision of a “Digital Earth ” project proposed in 1998 by then US Vice-President Al Gore. Digital Earth was an ambitious global undertaking to build a multi-faceted computing system for education and research. I present a short history of the federal Digital Earth Initiative that followed the speech and the related, ongoing activities world-wide. I describe the Digital Earth vision, contrast it with Google Earth, and report on research aimed at defining a digital earth system in the terms of both a digital geolibrary and a proposed comprehensive digital historical atlas.

Keywords

Digital EarthEarth system scienceComputer scienceWorld Wide WebEarth (classical element)Interface (matter)GeographyRemote sensing

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