The 5th Digital Earth Summit was successfully held in Nagoya, Japan from 9-11 November 2014. Hosted by the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) and organized by the Chubu University, Japan, the event gathered more than 100 participants from 22 countries.
Eight parallel sessions were organized under the theme “Digital Earth for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)”. The topics of the sessions included Education for Sustainable Development, Digital Earth and Environment, Digital Earth and Disaster, Digital Earth and Agriculture, Digital Earth Infrastructure, City Planning, Geodesign and Digital City, Citizen Science and VGI, Visualization and Science Communication. In addition, two special sessions were held covering Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Latest Satellite, JAXA.
Prof. Atsuo Iiyoshi, Chancellor of Chubu University and Ms. Michiko Ueno, former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan gave the keynote speeches during the opening ceremony. Prof. John Richards, President of the International Society for Digital Earth gave the opening address while Prof. Huadong Guo, Director-General of RADI chaired the keynote address session.
Thirty-seven presentations were given in the parallel sessions and special sessions, covering 10 topics. Prof. Zhen Li and Prof. Qizhong Lin from RADI reported on “The Characteristics Analysis of Thermokarst Lake Ice in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Using Envisat-ASAR Imagery” and “A Novel Image Fusion Method Using DSM and Spectral Un-mixing of Pixels”, respectively.
In the morning of November 11, Prof. John Richards chaired the panel discussion on “Digital Earth for ESD. Attendees discussed the outcomes of this Summit and the role of Digital Earth in the education for sustainable development. The summit also included a commercial exhibition where 12 organizations and companies in the Digital Earth field exhibited their research results and products. RADI and ISDE displayed their latest scientific researches in their exhibition booths.
At the closing ceremony, Prof. Huadong Guo awarded Prof. Hiromichi Fukui a medal for his contribution in organizing the Summit, and announced that the next Digital Earth Summit would be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2016.
The Digital Earth Summit is a series of meeting hosted by the International Society for Digital Earth. It has been convened every two years since 2006 in New Zealand (Auckland), Germany (Potsdam), Bulgaria (Baltimore) and New Zealand (Wellington).
