Digital Earth: From Earth Observations to Analytical Solutions

Abstract

Remote sensing collects the primary data for Earth observations. Social sensing especially citizen science offers crowdsourced volunteered geographic information (VGI) as patchworks of geospatial data infrastructure. Digital Earth integrates remote sensing and social sensing by employing Big Earth Data approaches. Via integration, geospatial information can be improved in four domains: spatial (coverage vs. details), temporal (timeliness), social (contextual), and data (credibility). While facing significant challenges in harnessing the soaring amount of spatial and social data, Digital Earth holds great opportunities for geospatial analytics to assist sustainable decision making.