[continued from Earth as A Lens: Global Collaboration, GeoCommunication, and The Birth of EcoSentience, page 1]
The Digital Earth Project and the 3D GeoBrowser Mandate
Al Gore's thought-provoking 1992 book, Earth in The Balance: Ecology and The Human Spirit is scheduled once again for release, at a time when the issues of global sustainability could not be more pressing or further out of reach. In 1998 as Vice President, Gore articulated a new global mission to create "a multi-resolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet into which vast quantities of data can be embedded." This signaled the launch of the Digital Earth Project a global initiative that brought government, educational institutions and the private sector together to change the way we learn, conduct research, and manage the resources of the planet.[37] The goal of the Digital Earth Project is "to move beyond the current desktop metaphor for user interfaces into a more natural, immersive environment which will facilitate navigation and interaction. High-end portals to the Digital Earth could be installed in museums, laboratories, and public libraries, but smaller, more affordable interfaces should also be available for use in homes and classrooms."[38]
The Digital Earth Project sought a way for people from all areas, backgrounds and interests to visualize and navigate through a massive body of online data, quickly and intuitively. The first phase of the project was to enlist students around the world many of whom were already participating in distributed projects such as Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment to help generate this body of local data.[39] For the first time ever, the Digital Earth Project encouraged international participation. To do so, it aligned with the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure, a dedicated consortium of mapping professionals and environmental scientists formed in 1996 to establish standards for the creation and exchange of spatial data.[40] The International Steering Committee for Global Mapping further solidified this international sharing of data among mapping agencies worldwide.[41]
Dr. Tim Foresman, one of the original core team of the Digital Earth Project and a leader in remote sensing[42], presented his insider's account, "Digital Earth: the Status and the Challenge," at the 2003 Global Mapping Forum in Okinawa, Japan[43]. This important paper explores the six-year evolution of the Digital Earth Project and its place in the larger 40-year evolution of computing. This paper was presented at the 2003 Global Mapping Forum in Okinawa, Japan. Foresman charts the early life of the Digital Earth vision, from its inception to its popularization of a new kind of geobrowser, to its early framework under NASA's leadership and ultimately to its new international reconfiguration led by the Chinese Academy of the Sciences (CAS)[44] and furthered by a consortium of NGO's under the International Society for the Digital Earth (ISDE)[45]. The paper is a call to arms for anyone interested in the geo-information infrastructure and the potential of a ubiquitous tool that can reshape and revolutionize our shared understanding of Earth and our place in the ecosystem.
The vision of the Digital Earth Project has also ignited a large but still loosely organized consortium of visionaries who are pushing the envelope of realtime 3D geo-visualization. Through the International Society of Digital Earth, the United Nations Environment Programme[46], and other organizations, Foresman has mobilized geoviz communities to seek a standard for 3D GeoBrowsers.[47] He points out in his paper that the approach is to move ever closer to open source GIS and a 3D geoviz system that is interoperable, portable, and spans the low end to high end of existing technologies.
Foresman's pioneering work, along with Sam Walker, Dan Zimble, Nick Faust, Jim Fournier and others, has resulted in a new 3D GeoBrowser mandate. Pre-released in the Summer of 2003, this mandate intends to serve this important evolution by establishing a "necessary framework for sustaining the vision of the Digital Earth." The mandate's recommendations introduce the importance of interoperable standards for platforms, operating systems, 3D rendering, client server architectures, data compression, connections to distributed data, Internet performance characteristics, and more.[48]
The approach is to move ever closer to open source GIS and a 3D geoviz system that is interoperable, portable, and spans the low end to high end of existing technologies.
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Although the use of 3D visualization for remote sensing and GIS integration is already widespread, the integration of imagery and information onto a scale-independent spherical globe is still very new. Seamless fly-downs onto an Earth "globe" are now being made possible by a cadre of visionaries who are taking advantage of the most recent leap in computing capability. Coming out of the work of former Silicon Graphics engineer and visionary Paul Hansen, another visualization methodology based on the sphere was the GeoMatrix Toolkit by Geofusion.[49] One year ago, the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)[50] which set the worldwide standard in Geographic Information Systems (GIS)[51] released its first 3D browser, ArcGLOBE using the GeoMatrix engine combined with its most advanced GIS technology. ESRI's goal is to set the new standard for 3D GIS by allowing users to stream through vast quantities of satellite data from every scale correlated with databases of local mapping information.[52]
Of the visualization systems discussed here, w e may be most familiar with Keyhole's 3D imagery of Earth CNN began to present it over a year ago at the start of the Iraq War, made fly animated fly-throughs from space to Baghdad and other locations in Iraq[53] a commonplace media experience. However, dynamic, realtime fly-throughs of Earth that users can control represent a much more important goal, especially if they could be Web-deliverable someday. Indeed, recently there have been numerous attempts to create lightweight, useful 3D Earth visualization tools data displays that enable geotiff tiles from various sources to be presented together in a realtime mosaic.[54]
3D Geobrowsers might even be thought of as an entirely new genre of media. These rich, sophisticated interfaces make it possible to seamlessly navigate vast bodies of realtime Earth data intuitively, as well as carry out scenarios and simulations for global problem-solving. The first time most of these tools were presented together was during the PlaNetwork[55] 2003 Conference, "Networking a Sustainable Future."[56] This conference included the work of Paul Hansen and Chuck Stein at Geofusion, Tim Foresman's latest initiatives for the Digital Earth Project, Buckminster Fuller Institute's EarthScope Project, Ben Discoe's Vterrain project,[57] Todd Helt's Maplicity GIS browser[58] (which brought a new level of sophistication to David Rumsey's Historical Map collection[59]) and Nick Faust's compelling history of realtime remote sensing, which reaches back to the early 1980s.
Interestingly, the open source approach has been followed since early in the evolution of GeoBrowsers. At the same time that Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML)[60] a standard web-based 3D format became open source, Martin Reddy, Yvan Le Clerc and colleagues at SRI International took the 3D GeoBrowser concept to a newly accessible level by introducing geoVRML and TerraVision.[61] This work also inspired a complementary cadre of developers who together formed an emergent, open source, GIS community.
We are now witnessing how the growth and cross-fertilization of this community of open source developers is making important contributions to the goals set forward by the 3D GeoBrowser mandate. Since it is the very nature of open source to support the interoperability of tools and code, the wild grasses of open source GIS may soon become a more unified landscape. But will open source actually be the future of GIS? The best online resources for following the growth of open source GIS communities are the non-profit Open Source Initiative[62], Open Source GIS[63], and FreeGIS.[64] One of the oldest, free open source projects is the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System GIS[65]; it will also operate with 3D GIS. Among the open source 3D GIS applications is Terravision (one of the oldest), as well as FreeGIS, OpenMap[66], MapLAB.[67] The second annual Open Source GIS Meeting in June, 2004 should help bring the current state of open source GIS into better perspective.
It is important to note that a healthy tension lies between open source GIS and the closed, proprietary, system-based GIS from ESRI and GE Smallworld.[68] This tension mirrors the debates surrounding Linux and its challenge to existing standards and approaches to interoperability, as well as the way it birthed new business models for computer technology. The open source and open systems trajectory is creating new dynamics and hybrid alliances between companies that, at one time, were unlikely collaborators. For example, Silicon Graphics' open source Altix platform now supports Linux.[69] In the field of education, the MIT Open Knowledge Initiative[70] and SAKAI Project[71] are driving a similar trend toward interoperability in learning management systems that will change the landscape of University-based e-learning. As technologies increase in sophistication and can be combined to apply to a variety of tasks, interoperability between systems becomes a critical goal.
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Footnotes
[37] Digital Earth Project Web Site: http://www.digitalearth.gov.
[38] Robinson, Brian, "Creating a Digital Earth" Federal Computer Week Magazine, July 17, 2000, http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0717/cov-earth-07-17-00.asp.
[39] Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Web site: http://www.globe.gov.
[40] Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Web site: http://www.gsdi.org.
[41] The International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM): http://www.iscgm.org/html4/index.html.
[42] Remote sensing is the science of acquiring information about the Earth's surface by sensing and recording reflected or emitted energy and processing, analyzing, and applying that information.
[43] Foresman, Timothy, "Digital Earth: the Status and the Challenge" Proceedings of the Global Mapping Forum, July 2003, http://www.acrors.ait.ac.th/digital_asia/Global%20Mapping/ Proceedings/TimothyW_Foresman.pdf.
[44] Chinese Academy of the Sciences (CAS): http://www.cas.cn/.
[45] International Society for the Digital Earth (ISDE): http://www.digitalearth.net.cn.
[46] The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): http://www.unep.org.
[47] NCGIA 3D Geobrowser Web site: http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/digitalearth/3DGeobrowser/documents.html.
[48] Foresman, Timothy, et.al. "Preliminary Draft Mandate for Digital Earth Geobrowsers: Status and Recommendations," First International Digital Earth Workshop, July 2003, http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/digitalearth/3DGeobrowser/files/ mandate_2003.pdf.
[49] Geofusion Web site: http://www.geofusion.com.
[50] Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Web site: http://www.esri.com.
[51] Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is an organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data that allows spatial or geographically referenced data to be captured, stored, updated, manipulated and displayed.
[52] "Introducing ArcGLOBE - An ArcGIS 3D Analyst Application," ArcNews Online, Summer 2003, http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer03articles/ introducing-arcglobe.html.
[53] Keyhole Web site: http://www.keyhole.com.
[54] GeoTIFF is a non-proprietary geographic TIFF file format. The purpose of GeoTIFF is to provide information that lets raster imagery (scanned maps, satellite images, results of geographic analysis, etc) be read automatically into correct position and scale within many GIS softwares.
[55] PlaNetwork Web site: http://www.planetwork.net.
[56] Erle, Schuyler, "Making the Geoscope a Reality," WebLogs, OReilly Network, June 8, 2003 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3288.
[57] VTerrain Web site: http://www.vterrain.org.
[58] Telemorphics Maplicity GIS Browser: http://www.telemorphic.com/maplicity.htm.
[59] David Rumsey Map Collection Web site: http://www.davidrumsey.com.
[60] Festa, Paula, "VRML Looks to Open Source," CNET News, Feb. 25, 1999, http://news.com.com/VRML+looks+to+open+source/ 2100-1023_3-222211.html.
[61] Terravision Web site: http://www.ai.sri.com/TerraVision.
[62] Open Source Initiative (OSI) Web site: http://opensource.org.
[63] Open Source GIS Web site: http://opensourcegis.org.
[64] FreeGIS Web site: http://www.freegis.org.
[65] GRASS Web site: http://grass.itc.it/index.html.
[66] OpenMap Web site: http://openmap.bbn.com.
[67] MapLab Web site: http://www.maptools.org/maplab.
[68] GE Smallworld Company Profile: http://www.microsoft.com/europe/vba/solsdir/companies/c_id_162.htm.
[69] Neuner, Steve, "Scaling Linux to New Heights: the SGI Altix 3000 System," LINUX Journal, Jan. 15, 2003, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6440.
[70] MIT Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) Project Web site: http://web.mit.edu/oki.
[71] SAKAI Project Web site: http://www.sakaiproject.org.
