The building up of Digital Earth will help promote the sustainable growth of the Chinese society and improve people's living standards and the digital Earth can provide rich information for exploring mineral, oil and natural gas deposits and conserving forest, grassland and ocean resources, Xu Guanhua, vice-minister of Science and Technology told an international conference on digital earth which opened in Beijing on November 29.

Digital Earth is the process through which any geographical object on earth can be digitized and made available on the Internet for either economic or military use. Among the vital expertise and hardware needed to launch Digital Earth are information and space technology, and related infrastructure.

Xu said that Digital Earth will also play an important role in helping China avoid the errors committed by some other countries in the process of urbanization, by providing scientific urban planning, management and monitoring.

Digital Earth is also closely related to people's life. Aided by Digital Earth, spatial information can be provided to help people travel around the world, virtually visiting libraries, museums, art galleries, music halls, which are thousands of kilometers away.

Over the past 20 years, relevant ministries and commissions under the State Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as local departments at the provincial, municipal and county levels have accumulated a lot of raw digitized data and corresponding materials required for establishing Digital Earth, including countless digitized geographic basic maps and city boundary maps.

The Chinese government is actively participating in the development of global databases, and is an enthusiastic member in such international programs as Global Mapping, Pacific Ocean Mapping, Study of the International Geosphere and Biosphere, Deep Sea and Continental Drilling, Continental Glacier Landing, and the Exploration of the Polar Regions.