The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B7. Beijing 2008
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tentative version which is used the existing global
geographic data sets such as GTOPO30 and GLCC for
raster data and changed the specification to those of
the Global Map were developed and released as global
Map version 0. On the other hand, WSSD was held at
Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002 and adopted
Johannesburg plan of Implementation. The plan called
for promoting initiatives and partnerships for Global
Mapping and a target which the whole land areas of
the earth would be covered by 2007 was set up. As a
result, development of the data were promoted by
each participant and the data of almost all land areas
of the earth except for few areas such as those of
non-participating countries have been released by
June, 2008 as the Global Map version 1.
Copy rights of the data are owned by each country/
region, but there are free of charge when they are used
for non-profitable purposes. Previously, all data used
to be released from ISCGM web site. User registers
his/her e-mail address and gets ID number and
password, and they can download the data which they
want. But the way of data release begins to change. In
the 14 th meeting, July, 2008, ISCGM resolved to
recommend that participating organizations interested
released their Global Map data from their own website.
Of course, for some countries, it isn’t easy to release
their Global Map by their own website. In this case,
those data are continuously released from the website
of ISCGM. By this resolution, it is expected that the
awareness and use of the Global Map will be
increased in those countries.
7. Issues to be solved and future plan
7.1 Data format for vector layers
As mentioned above, data format of vector layers is
VPF. This format was adopted by ISCGM because it
was able to describe various geographic data and it
was completely opened to the public and so on. On the
other hand, there is no common GIS software which
can deal with the data of VPF directly. As a result,
ISCGM has decided to release the Global Map data
with user friendly format and change the format of
vector data to other ones in the next stage. Now, the
discussion continues in the ISCGM and GML3 will be
used as new format for releasing.
7.2 Use of the Global Map
Global Map should be used for various purposes such
as evaluation of current global environment, disaster
countermeasures, decision making for sustainable
development, education for global issues and so on. In
order to promote the use of the Global Map, many
kinds of activities should be done. “The Global
Mapping Forum 2008” has been held on 5 th -7 th June,
2008 at Tokyo, Japan as one of those activities of this
purpose. In the forum, a lot of data producers and
users participated and discussed how to promote the
data use. Various activities like the forum are
necessary and we will continue those activities.
7.3 Development of the Global Map version 2
Global environment will be change with time passing.
It is necessary to update the Global Map data to show
the current status of the earth and its change.
Therefore Global Map will be updated with
cooperation of participating organizations by 2012 and
released as version 2.
Towards to the development of the Global Map
version 2, some changes of the specifications will be
also discussed and implemented.
8. Conclusions
The concept of Global Map was proposed in 1992,
after the Earth summit at Reo de Janeiro and through
some preparing period, ISCGM was established in
1996. Actual data development of the Global Map,
scale of 1 to 1 million, with 8 layers has started in
1998 and continued it in 179 participating counties
and regions. As a result, the Global Map version 1 has
released by June, 2008. Since updating of the data is
necessary to monitor the changes of global
environment, Global Map version 2 will be developed
and released by 2012.
References
Fukushima, Y. 2000, Implementation of Global
