Supporting future earth with global geospatial information

Future Earth, initiated by the International Council of Science Unions and presented during the Planet under Pressure conference held on 26–29 March 2012, is a global research initiative aiming at developing the knowledge for effective response to the risks and opportunities of global environmental change and for supporting transformation towards a sustainable world. It calls for the delivery of solution-oriented research, effective inter-disciplinary collaboration and timely information in line with opportunities of global environmental change and for supporting transformation towards global sustainability in the coming decades (Future Earth 2014; van der Hel 2106). Dynamic Planet, Global Development and Transformations towards sustainability are its three research themes, which depend critically on the availability and utilization of reliable information, including multiscale geospatial data sets, at both local and global scales (Reid et al. 2010). With the advancement of remote sensing and spatial information technologies, more and more geospatial data sets at both global and local scales will increasingly become available in addition to those that have already been produced in the past (Chen et al. 2016). Supporting Future Earth with reliable global geospatial information is becoming a key challenge for assuring successful global understanding, environmental change analysis, transformational development and dynamic modelling (Guo 2016), and therefore ensuring the successful implementation of the Future Earth. This special issue of the International Journal of Digital Earth (IJDE) is devoted to the latest development on global geospatial data production and sharing, successful application experiences of global geospatial information in environmental change analysis and sustainability studies, examination and analysis of up-to-date user requirements and key gaps arising from Future Earth studies, and identification of major challenges. It includes two invited papers and six submitted papers, all peer-reviewed, addressing different aspects of supporting Future Earth with global geospatial information. The papers by Doman and Reuter and Zeng et al. focus on the availability of global geospatial information by looking into available earth observation and digital elevation model data sets, data sharing and CO2 data generation. The other four papers by Chen et al., Brovelli et al., Wen et al. and Wang et al. present solution-oriented studies, particular computing tools and platforms that can support the implementation of the Future Earth concepts. Finally, the two papers by Mario Hernandez and Desha et al. discuss digital earth development issues in the context of the Future Earth. Ian Dowman and Hannes I. Reuter in their invited paper, entitled ‘Global geospatial data from Earth observation: status and issues’, presents a high-level review to assess the progress at the global level in developing geospatial data sets including digital elevation model data. This high-level review provides readers opportunities to understand some key issues related to standardization, accuracy and validation, data availability and presentation with respect to providing reliable global geospatial information using earth observation methods to support Future Earth developments. Mario Hernandez’s invited paper focuses on how digital earth platform can support sustainable development goals towards sustainability, which is the core of Future Earth initiative. The paper discusses aspects of developing a supportive digital earth platform and some foreseeable challenges, particularly data and geo-visualization aspects related to digital earth platform for adding value to data and sharing data with other disciplines. Recommendations on the way the International Society of Digital Earth (ISDE) should move forward are given. The paper recaps the importance of a digital