On September 9, 2009, the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE6) with the theme of Digital Earth in Action will be convened in Beijing, China. It will continue the tradition of the symposium series, inviting world-class scientists, decision-makers, engineers and educators to review the achievements in the past decade and prospect the future development of digital earth. The symposium will be organized by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and co-organized by 16 Chinese and relevant international organizations. The hosting organizations of this symposium are Chinese National Committee for ISDE and Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth, CAS.

Digital earth is a virtual representation of our planet and a global initiative aimed at harnessing the world's data and information resources to develop a virtual 3-D model of the Earth in order to monitor, measure, and forecast natural and human activity on the planet. It has a broad domain related to earth observation, geographic information system, global positioning system, virtual reality, computer technology, network communication, geosciences and social sciences, etc.

Since the promulgation of the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth at the First International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE) in 1999, digital earth has prospered and made great progress in both theories and applications. The international symposia on digital earth have been held in Canada, Czech Republic, Japan, and the United States every two years since 2001, and Digital Earth Summits were convened in New Zealand and Germany in 2006 and 2008 respectively. The themes of above digital earth symposia and summits evolved from “Toward Digital Earth” (1st ISDE), to “Beyond Information Infrastructure” (2nd ISDE), and then to “Digital Earth－Information Resources for Global Sustainability” (3rd ISDE), to “Digital Earth for Global Commons” (4th ISDE), and then to “Bringing Digital Earth Down to Earth”, while the digital earth summits focus on “Digital Earth on sustainability” (New Zealand, 2006) and “Digital Earth Summit on Geoinformatics: Tools for Global Change Research” (Germany 2008).

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration on Digital Earth, the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), CAS takes the responsibility to organize the 6th International Symposium on Digital Earth under the joint auspices of ISDE and CAS. This symposium will mainly focus on the technological advances and the various emerging applications linking digital earth and many other relating technologies. Over the past ten years, digital earth has been widely adopted for dealing with social and sustainable issues. The 6th ISDE will play a crucial role in putting forward international exchange and cooperation in building and developing digital earth theory, technology and applications.

This symposium has been received remarkable notice worldwide, as its webpage www.isde6.org have been visited over 10,000 times from 104 countries, and received over 900 abstracts and over 500 full papers. The plenary session of ISDE6 will be arranged in the opening ceremony as well as 3 days morning session from 10th to 12th. The organizing committee of the 6th ISDE has invited 25 renowned scientists and enterprise managers to give keynote presentations. Dr. José Achache, Director of GEO Secretariat will present “GEOSS, The Global Earth Observation System of Systems: An Operable Digital Earth", and Prof. Xu Guanghua, former Minister of Science and Technology will give a presentation on “Digital Earth and Global Change”, Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate, Google Inc, will present Google Earth’s achievement with the title “Lessons from the first 600 Million Digital Earth Users”, and Prof. Micheal Goodchild will review the achievement of digital earth with a title “Digital Earth: A Decadal Assessment”. For more information about the keynote presentations at the 6th ISDE, please visit http://www.isde6.org/ks.html.

There will be 3-days afternoon parallel sessions with over 180 selected presentations from different fields in digital earth, covering Digital Earth Frameworks, Models, and Data Warehouse; Web Based Service for Digital Earth; Digital Earth Geobrowser, Virtual Global and Simulation; Digital Earth and Global Environment; Virtual Environment for Digital Earth; Spatial Data Infrastructure for Digital Earth; Earth Observation for Digital Earth; Data Processing Techniques for Digital Earth; Global Change, Atmosphere and Ocean Study related to Digital Earth; Visualization and Simulation for Digital Earth; Virtual Reality and 3D Techniques for Digital Earth; Data Mining Techniques Digital Earth; Integrated Technologies for Digital Earth; Digital Ocean; Digital Agriculture; Digital Earth Education; Digital Forest; Digital Ecology and Land Use/Land Cover; Digital City; Digital Disaster Mitigation; Digital Heritage; Digital Ecology and Environment; Airborne Remote Sensing, etc. In addition, as a global initiative for resolving global change issue, SPOT Image together with UNESCO initiated “Planet Action” initiative, which was launched at the 5th ISDE in San Francisco, USA in 2007; and at this symposium there will be a special session dedicated to Planet Action, entitled “Planet Action Contribution to Digital Earth”.

A quarterly publication of the International Society for Digital Earth, International Journal of Digital Earth, was published by Taylor & Francis (editor-in-chief: Prof. Guo Huadong), with an inaugural issue in March 2008, and now have been published 8 issues including an special issue. At the 6th ISDE, a special session on How to Write Scientific Papers to the International Journal of Digital Earth will be held with Prof. Arthur Cracknell, the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Remote Sensing, give a presentation to lecture the young students on scientific writing. This journal is concerned with the science and technology of Digital Earth and its applications in all major disciplines, the principal topics are: Digital Earth Framework, Digital Earth Applications, Digital Earth Architecture and Standards, Digital Earth and Earth Systems, Geoinformatics, Geo-spatial Science, Mobile Mapping Systems, Visualization and Numerical Simulation, Visible and Microwave Earth Observation, Data Fusion and Integration Algorithm, Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence, Data Processing, Earth System and Global Databases, Remote Sensing - GIS - GPS, Global Environmental Change and Discrete Global Grids. The journal contains primary research papers on basic science, techniques and applications, review articles, short technical notes and a section of technical Letters containing material that merits fast publication. Online submission of papers to the journal can be made at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijde   .

The 6th ISDE has attracted over 20 companies in the fields related to digital earth to participate in the exhibition and offering sponsorship to the organizing committee, Such as SPOTImage, Leica Geosystem, Beijing Space Eye innovation Technology Co. Ltd, PCI, PASCO, XTD Digital Mapping, and ESRI. Media partners such as Coordinates, ASM, GEO, GEOinformatics, GISdevelopment, V1 Magazine, ImagingNotes, ITC, Taylor & Francis etc., all give great support to this important international event on digital earth. From which we can see the concern and anticipation to the 6th ISDE from research scholars, industrial enterprises and administrators at different levels. This symposium will pave a way for the future development of Digital Earth, and will also have more impact on promoting the visions, technologies, and applications of digital earth worldwide. 

The hosting organization, Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of sciences is deserved to introduce here. CEODE was established on August 27, 2007 through consolidating three CAS units: the Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station, the Center for Airborne Remote Sensing and the Laboratory of Digital Earth Sciences. As an institution noted for combination of both scientific research and professional services, CEODE is committed to: high-quality operation of aerospace Earth observation system and related data services; exploration of cutting-edge technologies for earth observation and their application demonstrations; theoretical and technological research into key issues concerning Digital Earth and their integrated applications at the global, national and regional scales; and the establishment of a research platform for Digital Earth.

CEODE is currently undertaking two national scientific projects by taking advantage of its major scientific facilities, including the Remote-sensing Satellite Ground Station and remote-sensing aircraft, which are recognized for their irreplaceable contributions to the development of China's remote sensing technology.

With the focuses on such research interests as Projects for high-performance geo-information computing, Spatial models of the Earth system, Digital Earth science platform and its integrated application, etc, CEODE has been committing itself either to the application and implementation of major scientific research projects, or to the acceleration of infrastructure construction. Furthermore, the Center has been attaching great importance on the establishment of remote sensing system for emergency monitoring and evaluation of natural hazards. To meet the urgent needs of this country, CEODE researchers carried out the disaster evaluation of the south China’s winter storm and Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 by using remote sensing technology. In 2009, they took advantage of their facilities and expertise to conduct dynamic monitoring on the draughts in north China, the landslide in Yarlung Zangbo River Valley and the bushfire in Australia, offering an important help to concerned departments.

For more information about the CEODE, please visit http://www.ceode.ac.cn/en/, where you can get the structures, research activities, international cooperations and up-to-date news letters of the CEODE.