---
id: books/manual-of-digital-earth
about:
  label: Manual of Digital Earth
  description: >-
    Open-access reference edited by Guo, Goodchild and Annoni, 2020, on the
    vision, technologies and uses of a digital model of the whole planet.
  tags:
    - digital earth
    - remote sensing
    - geospatial
    - open access
    - reference
book:
  authors:
    - Huadong Guo (ed.)
    - Michael F. Goodchild (ed.)
    - Alessandro Annoni (ed.)
  publisher: Springer Singapore
  year: 2020
  isbn: '9789813299146'
  url: 'https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3'
domains:
  - places
  - climate
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Open Library: Manual of Digital Earth'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23499232W'
    - title: 'Open Library: Manual of Digital Earth (Springer Nature, 2020)'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/books/OL31369783M'
    - title: Crossref record for 10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3 (Manual of Digital Earth)
      url: 'https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
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.