Innovation journey of the Digital Earth Node (DEN): Experiences, ideas and future opportunities

Abstract

Abstract There is an increasing need for readily-accessible virtual meeting spaces to connect decision-makers from different geographic locations and share spatial data for timely decision making. This paper presents the journey to date in pre-totyping and prototyping a Digital Earth Node’ (DEN) remote, immersive collaboration space to support learning, creating, and developing spatial capabilities, including the core one-touch “all-in” feature. It describes the innovative digital collaboration method that creates a high-trust, private and fast experience that makes accessibility of multiple data sets and monitors possible over low bandwidth mobile networks. This uncovers opportunities for field applications that include mobile vehicle data centres with modular mobile bandwidth leverage, creating a high redundancy network and large-scale collaboration offering. The authors discuss insights into improved decision-making and integrated policies, including the potential for programs that support engagement and collaboration between government, industry and academic researchers globally. The findings have implications to solve challenges from immediate disaster response and recovery, to planning for resilient communities, built environments and supporting infrastructure.