Digital Earth Framework Research Articles

Construction and application of the 3D geo-hazard monitoring and early warning platform

Abstract As geo-hazard monitoring data increases in category and size, conventional geo-hazard information management systems, without a unified integration framework and visualized data display, are unable to satisfy the urgent needs of geo-hazard information management. Representational State Transfer (REST), a resource-centered service architecture, abstracts data and services into resources for unified Uniform Resource Identifier access, enabling it to take full advantage of HTTP with great flexibility and scalability. Based on the REST service architecture, this paper constructs a 3D geo-hazard monitoring and early warning platform with sound service compatibility and scalability by integrating geographical information, real-time monitoring data, and early warning models into the 3D Digital Earth framework. The platform displays topography, stratum lithology, and relevant information, as well as real-time monitoring data in a 3D visual, and provides early warning services for geo-hazards through access to real-time early warning models. As a result, it is capable of providing comprehensive information management, monitoring, and early warning of multiple geo-hazards, aiding decision-making in disaster prevention and mitigation, and enhancing the information level of geo-hazard prevention and mitigation work.

Modelling Offset Regions around Static and Mobile Locations on a Discrete Global Grid System: An IoT Case Study

With the huge volume of location-based point data being generated by Internet of Things (IoT) devices and subsequent rising interest from the Digital Earth community, a need has emerged for spatial operations that are compatible with Digital Earth frameworks, the foundation of which are Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGSs). Offsetting is a fundamental spatial operation that allows us to determine the region within a given distance of an IoT device location, which is important for visualizing or querying nearby location-based data. Thus, in this paper, we present methods of modelling an offset region around the point location of an IoT device (both static and mobile) that is quantized into a cell of a DGGS. Notably, these methods illustrate how the underlying indexing structure of a DGGS can be utilized to determine the cells in an offset region at different spatial resolutions. For a static IoT device location, we describe a single resolution approach as well as a multiresolution approach that allows us to efficiently determine the cells in an offset region at finer (or coarser) resolutions. For mobile IoT device locations, we describe methods to efficiently determine the cells in successive offset regions at fine and coarse resolutions. Lastly, we present a variety of results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

An integrated environmental analytics system (IDEAS) based on a DGGS

Discrete global grid systems (DGGS) have been proposed as a data model for a digital earth framework. We introduce a new data model and analytics system called IDEAS – integrated discrete environmental analysis system to create an operational DGGS-based GIS which is suitable for large scale environmental modelling and analysis. Our analysis demonstrates that DGGS-based GIS is feasible within a relational database environment incorporating common data analytics tools. Common GIS operations implemented in our DGGS data model outperformed the same operations computed using traditional geospatial data types. A case study into wildfire modelling demonstrates the capability for data integration and supporting big data geospatial analytics. These results indicate that DGGS data models have significant capability to solve some of the key outstanding problems related to geospatial data analytics, providing a common representation upon which fast and scalable algorithms can be built.

Assessing the state of the art in Discrete Global Grid Systems: OGC criteria and present functionality

The continuous growth of available geospatial data requires new methods for its integration, analysis, and visualization to be explored and implemented in software available to the geospatial community. Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) are an emerging method for spatial data handling in the digital earth framework. DGGS are hierarchical data structures for discretizing the Earth’s surface that have seen considerable theoretical development over the last two decades. In this paper, four software implementations are reviewed, dggridR, H3, OpenEAGGR, and S2, to explore their potential applications in data modelling and GIS, as well as their performance. These software implementations were also evaluated against the recently published Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) abstract specification. The results indicate great potential and versatility for utilizing such systems in geospatial analysis, if basic methods for converting and handling spatial features are further developed. The performance of these systems is shown to be highly scalable and operational with datasets of various sizes. Yet, it is demonstrated that the current software implementations generally fall short of fulfilling all of the OGC requirements or it was not possible to confirm their compliance. The assessment here identified that further enhancements, endorsement of OGC criteria, and their explicit acknowledgment within official documentation remain key research needs for the evaluated software packages. Further work developing operational DGGS that solve real world problems may promote greater community adoption and integration of DGGS data structures into commonly used geospatial platforms.

An open-source web service for creating quadrilateral grids based on the rHEALPix Discrete Global Grid System

ABSTRACT The foundation of modern Digital Earth frameworks is the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS). To standardize the DGGS model, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) recently created the DGGS Specification, which also aims to increase usability and interoperability between DGGSs. To support these demands and aid future research, open implementations are necessary. However, several OGC conformant DGGSs are not available for researchers to use. This has motivated us to develop an open-source web service that allows users to create quadrilateral grids based on the rHEALPix DGGS. In this paper, we describe the implementation of the web service, including issues and limitations, and demonstrate how discrete global grids and regional grids can be created. Lastly, we present examples that show how vector data sets can be modeled and integrated at different levels of resolution – a key benefit of the DGGS model.

Geospatial Data Organization Methods with Emphasis on Aperture-3 Hexagonal Discrete Global Grid Systems

Digital Earth frameworks deal with data sets of different types collected from various sources. To effectively store, retrieve, and transmit these data sets, efficient multi-scale data representations that are compatible with the underlying structure of the Digital Earth framework are required. In this article, we describe several such techniques and their properties: namely, how to represent data in the multi-scale cell hierarchy of a discrete global grid system (DGGS) or in the multi-scale hierarchy of a customized wavelet transform. We also discuss how these techniques can be tuned to be applicable to the A3H DGGS.

Utilizing a Discrete Global Grid System for Handling Point Clouds with Varying Locations, Times, and Levels of Detail

Discrete global grid systems (DGGSs) have emerged in recent years as a new specification for working with global heterogeneous data sets in a Digital Earth framework. Point clouds originating from different sources usually have varying initial characteristics. This research aims to analyze to what extent a DGGS can be used to handle point clouds having varying coordinate systems, acquired at different levels of detail (densities), and at different times in the creation of a global map of point clouds. DGGSs, which are currently limited to a 2D (surface) space, are extended into 3D and 4D spaces to fully harness the multidimensional nature of point clouds. A continuous spatial indexing strategy, based on a space-filling curve, is then developed on an ellipsoidal model of the Earth and used to efficiently cluster and retrieve DGGS-based point clouds stored in a database. Finally, the queried points are visualized in a Web browser. The hierarchical, multi-resolution nature of a DGGS is exploited to achieve a variable-scale smooth-zoom visualization. The challenges and opportunities of point cloud integration in a DGGS are presented.

A Geographic Meshing and Coding Method Based on Adaptive Hilbert-Geohash

Geographic meshing system is an essential technology in the digital earth framework and has essential applications in the integration and organization of heterogeneous spatial data, along with corresponding coding method. But current meshing and coding methods show unsatisfying locality and performance. To make an improvement, an adaptive Hilbert-Geohash meshing and coding method called AHG is proposed, which could represent both the location and the approximate size of the coded object directly by the meshing hierarchy and the corresponding coding length. This unique feature helps to accelerate the spatial range query and neighbor query. By simple string operations, many candidate objects that do not meet the query criteria can be quickly filtered out without precise spatial calculation. In addition, AHG code can also support spatial size query by finding objects whose size is within a certain interval quickly, without calculating the precise size of each object, which brings great convenience to spatial size statistics of a massive spatial dataset. Demonstrated by experiments over different types of the spatial dataset in a common PC environment, AHG shows favorable stability and scalability besides its capability in accelerating spatial query. The method is now applied successfully in several spatial query tools in a high-performance geographic information system called HiGIS.

The second law of geography for a spatially enabled economy

ABSTRACTLocation has proven axiomatic as an economic variable throughout human history. Tobler’s first law of geography introduced the importance of location; in that, near things are more related than far things. In an age of digital economies, a new research frontier exists where everything is more related to everything else and has an increased economic value from spatially enabled technology. The accessibility of digital-spatial information has brought economic geographers to a new understanding of markets within a Digital Earth framework. The importance of location to economic value can be expected to grow as the Internet of Things develops in sophistication. New business models enter and disrupt established markets with innovative spatially enabled approaches. A successful penetration of established markets suggests a new business model for financial and functional utility by engaging spatially enabled assets. The second law of geography is introduced as a conceptual framework to comprehend the economic potential of spatially enabled information. A comparative analysis of non-spatial versus spatial web agents provides a quantitative framework to demonstrate the benefits of the Digital Earth economy.

Challenges of agricultural monitoring: integration of the Open Farm Management Information System into GEOSS and Digital Earth

From a global perspective, agriculture is the single largest user of freshwater resources, each country using an average of 70% of all its surface water supplies. An essential proportion of agricultural water is recycled back to surface water and/or groundwater. Agriculture and water pollution is therefore the subject of (inter)national legislation, such as the Clean Water Act in the United States of America, the European Water Framework Directive, and the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution. Regular monitoring by means of sensor networks is needed in order to provide evidence of water pollution in agriculture. This paper describes the benefits of, and open issues stemming from, regular sensor monitoring provided by an Open Farm Management Information System. Emphasis is placed on descriptions of the processes and functionalities available to users, the underlying open data model, and definitions of open and lightweight application programming interfaces for the efficient management of collected (spatial) data. The presented Open Farm Management Information System has already been successfully registered under Phase 8 of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Architecture Implementation Pilot in order to support the wide variety of demands that are primarily aimed at agriculture pollution monitoring. The final part of the paper deals with the integration of the Open Farm Management Information System into the Digital Earth framework.

Categorization and Conversions for Indexing Methods of Discrete Global Grid Systems

Digital Earth frameworks provide a tool to receive, send and interact with large location-based datasets, organized usually according to Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS). In DGGS, an indexing method is used to assign a unique index to each cell of a global grid, and the datasets corresponding to these cells are retrieved or allocated using this unique index. There exist many methods to index cells of DGGS. Toward facility, interoperability and also defining a “standard” for DGGS, a conversion is needed to translate a dataset from one DGGS to another. In this paper, we first propose a categorization of indexing methods of DGGS and then define a general conversion method from one indexing to another. Several examples are presented to describe the method.

Hexagonal connectivity maps for Digital Earth

Geospatial data are gathered through a variety of different methods. The integration and handling of such datasets within a Digital Earth framework are very important in many aspects of science and engineering. One means of addressing these tasks is to use a Discrete Global Grid System and map points of the Earth's surface to cells. An indexing mechanism is needed to access the data and handle data queries within these cells. In this paper, we present a general hierarchical indexing mechanism for hexagonal cells resulting from the refinement of triangular spherical polyhedra representing the Earth. In this work, we establish a 2D hexagonal coordinate system and diamond-based hierarchies for hexagonal cells that enables efficient determination of hierarchical relationships for various hexagonal refinements and demonstrate its usefulness in Digital Earth frameworks.

Simulated impacts of 3D urban morphology on urban transportation in megacities: case study in Beijing

Urban morphology and morphology change and their impacts on urban transportation have been studied extensively in planar urban space. The essential feature of urban space, however, is its three-dimensionality (3D), and few studies have been conducted from a 3D perspective, overly limiting the accuracy of studies on the relationships between urban morphology and transportation. The aim of this paper is to simulate the impacts of 3D urban morphologies on urban transportation under the Digital Earth framework. On the basis of the principle that population distribution and movement are largely confined by 3D urban morphologies, which affect transportation, high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery and a thematic vector data-set were used to extract urban morphology and transportation-related variables. With a combination of three research methods – factor analysis, spatial regression analysis and Euclidean allocation – we provide an effective method to construct a simulation model. The paper indicates three general results. First, building capacity in the urban space has the most significant impact on traffic condition. Second, obvious urban space otherness, reflecting both use density characteristics and functional characteristics of urban space, mostly results in heavier traffic flow pressure. Third, no single morphology density indicator or single urban structure indicator can reflect its contribution to the pressure of traffic flow directly, but a combination of these different indicators has the ability to do so.

The application of China's land observation satellites within the framework of Digital Earth and its key technologies

Digital Earth is an interdisciplinary field involving space technology, information technology, and geoscience. This article introduces the land observation satellite system of China and discusses the requirements for satellite payloads in terms of spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution to establish a Digital Earth. The applications of land satellites under the framework of Digital Earth are introduced from the perspectives of data support, special subject services, and integrated information services. It is concluded that China's land observation satellites and ground processing systems will be fundamental components of the Digital Earth system, in which satellite data and their derived information will serve as the principal information source and greatly promote applications of Digital Earth.

SEAMONSTER: A demonstration sensor web operating in virtual globes

A sensor web is a collection of heterogeneous sensors which autonomously reacts to the observed environment. The SouthEast Alaska MOnitoring Network for Science, Technology, Education, and Research (SEAMONSTER) project has implemented a sensor web in partially glaciated watersheds near Juneau, Alaska, on the edge of the Juneau Icefield. By coupling the SEAMONSTER sensor web with digital earth technologies the scientific utility, education and public outreach efforts, and sensor web management of the project all greatly benefit. This paper describes the scientific motivation for a sensor web, the technology developed to implement the sensor web, the software developed to couple the sensor web with digital earth technologies, and demonstrates the SEAMONSTER sensor web in a digital earth framework.

Constructing a core framework of visual engine for Digital Earth system

A visual engine is the core of a Digital Earth system. There is a wide variety of functional requirements in Digital Earth system and different requirements correspond to different operations. Based on the development of the visual engine for ChinaStar, a 3D Digital China prototype software platform, and analysis of 3D Digital Earth platforms such as Google Earth, Virtual Earth, Skyline, etc, are discussed. A common core framework for a visual engine is proposed in this paper to construct a visual engine and then with this framework various Digital Earth application systems can be developed efficient. The parametric model of the Earth, scheduling and optimization in visual field, choice of 3D graphics library, and designing component-based visual engine framework of Digital Earth are discussed in detail. In addition, the relationships among these four basic components and the construction of visualization applications of Digital Earth by this method are also discussed.

Development of GIS-based environmental information system: an Indian scenario

Ideally, scientists should be able to format, explore, analyse, and visualise data in a simple, powerful and fast application that would seamlessly integrate georeferenced data from a variety of data sources into an intuitive visualisation. The focus of an Environmental Information System is providing environmental information to decision makers, policy planners, scientists and engineers, research workers, etc. which ensures integration of data collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination to all concerned. All such queries should be responded to supplying substantive information in the form of reports. The paper presents an innovative way to utilise the geographic information associated with the environmental data. The stand-alone application is the integration of using ArcObjects Environmental System Research Institute ArcGIS Engine 9.1 and VB.Net. The geographic information system (GIS)-based application, a framework of digital earth in terms of environmental information system provides a user-friendly query interface, which gives information about various environmental parameters in tabular as well as on map display. It also provides the visual interpretation to make further analysis and future decisions at multiple scales, locations and extents. The facility for modifying the map attributes and corresponding databases is integrated to update the information system. Output spatial data are produced in the form of reports using selected fields with display on map.

Evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision, technology and society

Digital Earth's framework can be traced to evolutionary threads with historic foundations that fostered the fertile conceptual and technological incubation. These threads incorporate writings, such as those of the visionary engineering-genius, Buckminster Fuller, in conjunction with an array of space age developments in computers, internet and communications, satellites, and education. In 1998, when Vice President Al Gore articulated the Digital Earth Vision, he portrayed the vision based upon myriad technology factors for the intellectual foundation and sparked a worldwide phenomenon that fortuitously included the Chinese leadership's recognition and acceptance. The Beijing Declaration is recognised for its role promulgating the International Digital Earth Symposium series to promote better understanding of the impacts of Digital Earth technology and applications on behalf of all humankind. Combinations of industrial, academic, and government organisations have advanced the technological components necessary for implementing the Digital Earth Vision at a prodigious rate. Commercial leaders, such as Google, have accelerated the influence of large segments of society towards components of the Digital Earth Vision. However, challenges still remain regarding requisite collaboration on international standards for metadata, interoperability, and data formats for space and time that will affect Digital Earth implementation scenarios. Functional requirements for the model Digital Earth geobrowser remain to be fully articulated. The current paper presents an overview of the historical components, the key players on the international scene, the catalytic technological advances, and the societal response to the growth of the Digital Earth community.