期刊名称：ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
印刷版ISSN：2194-9042
电子版ISSN：2194-9050
出版年度：2008
卷号：XXXVII Part B6a
页码：137-140
出版社：Copernicus Publications
摘要：The fusion of the World Wide Web and spatial technologies has lead to the development of virtual globes which are increasingly serving as gateways to global geospatial data. Examples include Google Earth (originally Keyhole Earth Viewer), NASA's World Wind, ESRI's ArcGIS Explorer, Microsoft Virtual Earth, GeoFusions' GeoPlayer, Skyline Globe, ossimPlanet, EarthBrowser, and ESRI's ArcGlobe. These systems are revolutionizing earth observation data access and integration in two primary ways: 1) Democratization of access. The popularity of the openly accessible virtual globes extends far beyond the traditional professional communities engaged in geospatial science and commerce. The number of people interactively viewing and extracting content from earth observations such as satellite imagery is on a rapid upward swing as a result of virtual globes. For the technical users virtual globes have vastly reduced the overhead associated with accessing global archives of satellite imagery by eliminating purchase costs and effort required to stage and manage large image holdings. 2) Democratization of content contribution. Users are able to make links to their own earth observation data via web mapping services and insert site specific content (such as descriptions andphotographs) which can be openly accessed by the broader community. This has made it possible to integrate earth observation data from diverse sources, enable increased productivity for individual projects and studies. Virtual globes are presently used extensively in areas including education, research/collaboration, and disaster response. The current wealth of technologies, expanding bandwidth, changing user expectations, and data available via the geospatial web are driving the rapid development of virtual globes. This paper presents a brief overview of virtual globes over the last decade, reviews the current capabilities and applications for virtual globes, and envisions what may be anticipated in the coming years
关键词：Virtual Globes; Remote Sensing; Geospatial Data
