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THE NEW ERA FOR GEO-INFORMATION 
Deren Li 
Wuhan University 
ABSTRACT 
Along with the forthcoming of Google Earth, Virtual Earth, the next generation of Internet, Web 
2.0, Grid Computing and smart sensor web, comes the new era for Geo-Information. In this paper, 
main features of new Geo-Information era are discussed. This new era is characterized by these fea- 
tures: serviced users are extended from professionals to all public users, the users are data and in- 
formation providers as well, provided geospatial data are no longer measurement-by-specification 
but measurement-on-demand through smart sensor web, and services are transferred from data- 
driving to application-driving. Such problems as out-of-order issues in geographic data collection 
and information proliferation, quality issues in geographic information updating, security issues in 
geographic information services, privacy issues in sharing geographic information and property is- 
sues on sharing geographic information, which are brought about by new geo-information era, es- 
pecially problems and challenges confronted in geo-information science and geo-spatial informa- 
tion industry, are analyzed. Then strategies concerning standards, planning, laws, technology and 
applications are proposed.