Manual of Digital Earth

The manual reviews twenty years of Digital Earth, the vision of a navigable model of the planet. It traces how the idea evolved and the technologies it depends on:

• Digital Earth platforms
• remote sensing and navigation satellites
• geospatial processing and visualisation
• spatial data infrastructures (shared systems for publishing and finding map data)
• big data and cloud computing
• artificial intelligence
• the Internet of Things
• social media

Later chapters cover Digital Earth in sustainable development, climate change and disaster response. Applications include digital cities and digital heritage. Further chapters deal with citizen science, economic value, regional and national programmes, education and ethics. The book closes with the open problems. It is open access.

The manual covers the planetary end of the scale. It also maps the geospatial infrastructure, data sources and standards that a twin of any place depends on.