Manual of Digital Earth

The manual reviews twenty years of Digital Earth, from the original vision of a navigable model of the planet through its evolution and the technologies that carry it: Digital Earth platforms, remote sensing and navigation satellites, geospatial processing and visualisation, spatial data infrastructures, big data and cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and social media. It goes on to the roles of Digital Earth in sustainable development, climate change and disaster response, applications such as digital cities and digital heritage, citizen science, economic value, regional and national programmes, education and ethics, and closes with the open problems. It is open access.

For a twin builder it is the planetary end of the scale and the best single map of the geospatial infrastructure, data sources and standards that a twin of any place sits on top of.