The Digital Earth Vision outlines a future where georeferenced information are harnessed, interlinked, and made accessible to all for the exploration, understanding, and explanation of phenomena related to the earth’s surface and in addressing pressing global challenges. Accessible geospatial information resources and sustainable infrastructures are key to realize this vision. ‘Geospatial information resources’ are used here to denote georeferenced datasets, tools (numerical models, software, etc.) but also information products derived from these georeferenced datasets (visualizations, decision support services, etc.).
As pointed out in a recent review of the Digital Earth concept by Annoni et al., the FAIR principles could further push towards easily available, enhanced and more reusable knowledge in the Digital Earth framework. FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) is a set of guiding principles to boost the ability of machines to automatically find and use information resources, in addition to supporting their reuse by individuals. The frameworks and techniques developed to make geospatial resources more FAIR may thus be beneficial to the Digital Earth vision. This Article Collection intends to provide a platform for the scientific community to report on achievements and open issues on FAIR geospatial information resources.
We welcome primary research papers, review articles, and short technical letters documenting progress on FAIR geospatial information resources. FAIRness can be approached from the computing perspective, the analyst perspective and the developer perspective, and contributions addressing one or several of these perspectives in the Earth System Sciences are particularly encouraged. The contribution of the submission to the Digital Earth vision should also be made explicit. Topics include:
Findable
- Techniques for geospatial metadata creation and curation (manual, automatic, semi-automatic, crowdsourcing)
- Semantic search and question answering over geospatial resources
- Discovery of distributed, linked geospatial information resources
- Innovative search user interfaces for geospatial information resources
Accessible
- Persistence strategies for geospatial resources
- Maintenance strategies for geospatial information infrastructures
- Immersive environments for (data) exploration and analysis
- Accessible design of tools for (data) exploration and analysis
Interoperable
- Modelling approaches for geographic concepts
- (Neuro-symbolic) approaches for formal geographic knowledge representation
- Integration of geospatial information resources across communities
- Standards for data/models/software descriptions and their impacts
Reusable
- Approaches fostering the reuse of (digital) research results across communities
- Reuse metrics and models in the context of geospatial information resources
- Digital rights management and smart contracting for geospatial resources
- Users' and communities' needs for geographic knowledge reuse
Cross-cutting themes
- Ethics of FAIR geospatial resources
- Education and capacity building towards FAIRness (e.g., gamification approaches, ...)
- Techniques for (automated) assessment of FAIRness
- Participation, engagement and FAIRness (e.g., citizen science approaches, ...)
- Reward mechanisms to promote FAIRness in the Earth System Sciences
