Populating digital earth: improving access to Chinese remote sensing data for terrestrial applications

Abstract

Global change has a significant impact on the lives of humankind. Earth observation can help to better understand our earth and cope with global change. With the availability of more reliable environmental data sets, digital earth is becoming a popular way to monitor the Earth and provide information to researchers and decision makers on environment protection, disaster mitigation, and social benefits. Therefore, accessing data with lowering costs is essential for digital earth. Nevertheless, there are big challenges in ensuring the feasibility of access to Chinese remote sensing data. This paper outlines some of the main challenges in realizing data sharing, provides an analysis of the core reasons leading to these challenges, and proposes recommendations to overcome the challenges. Amongst the main challenges are differences in data policy to gain access to satellite data, diverse data formats, and delivery mechanisms. The major challenge for the decision makers is to define a more open policy and for the scientist the challenge is to implement these polices for the benefit of all. This paper proposes that governments should adopt policies encouraging more open distribution and access to their data, in order to generate an improved digital earth with increased benefits to human society.