Digital Asia and Sentinel Asia Project for Sustainable Future

Hiromichi FUKUI
Global Security Research Institute, Keio University , Japan

Since 2004, Keio University in Japan initiated the Digital Asia project referred to as Digital Asia Research Cent re for strategic design with the sponsorship as one of Academic Frontier Projects by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). This project targets to develop geospatial infrastructure for data sharing via Internet and provide people and communities in the region with easy access by the collaboration of potential agencies who will participate on voluntary and best-effort basis. It is expected that there will be a lots of distributed nodes by supporting the development of web map servers, web map browsers and finally the content by where 2.0 mechanism （ read-write GIS / participatory GIS) . Sentinel Asia project is led by the APRSAF to share the disaster information in the Asia-Pacific region on the Digital Asia platform and to make the best use of earth observation satellites data for disaster management in the Asia-Pacific region. The system will draw on satellite derived products and imagery form all available earth observing geostationary, or low-earth orbiting satellites, including meteorological satellites that provide routine data to the region.

In parallel the above , the media browser as community wear being developed providing easy and fast access to news and information that related to social and community activities in the region. This will perform a better “browsing” system that helps to look into all possible relationship of information anyone is interested. Finally, the project develop a process to identify most appropriate system in solving problems associated with any society with most appropriate way using enormous data coming from various agencies and individuals in the region for the sustainable future. This project may enable envisioning of " sustainable " future for Asia .

Keywords: Digital Earth, Web-GIS, Where2.0, Disaster Management, SDI(Spatial Data Infrastructure), Clearinghouse, Media Browser