Last September, about 400 delegates gathered in Florence, Italy from all over the world, to attend the 11th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE11). The Opening Plenary session was held in the historic Salone dei Cinquecento at Palazzo Vecchio. This included a celebration ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the International Symposium on Digital Earth which was initiated in Beijing, China in November 1999 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The event endorsed