Author(s):
Karl Grossner* - UC Santa Barbara
Michael F. Goodchild - UC Santa Barbara
Keith C. Clarke - UC Santa Barbara
Abstract:
In a 1998 speech before the California Science Center in Los Angeles, then US Vice-President Al Gore called for a global undertaking to build a multi-faceted computing system for education and research, which he termed "Digital Earth." The Digital Earth vision is that of a computing system providing access (via response to queries and exploratory tools) to what is known about the planet and its inhabitants' activities, now and at any time in history. Furthermore, it would accommodate modeling extensions for predicting future conditions with what skill their algorithms might achieve. As such, in its most complete form Digital Earth is a "mirror world," conceivably even passing a Turing-like test. Although such completeness is not a realistic possibility, a digital earth system capable of organizing all such knowledge may be, and is the subject of this research. Together, geographic information systems (GIS), digital geolibraries and knowledge organization systems (KOS) provide many of the conceptual and technical elements required for a comprehensive digital earth system. However, an approach to data modeling that is fundamentally different from a typical GIS is required. It must be semantic and ontology-based; that is, structured to allow feature and event attributes to represent meaning in class rules and relationships. Attribute changes over time must be trackable, to permit visualizations of dynamic processes. Furthermore, the model must enable integration of object and field data sources. We review recent related research and chart a course through the remaining issues, towards an achievable digital earth system.
