Understanding geographical conditions monitoring: a perspective from China

Abstract

The geographical condition is a very important component of a country's national condition, and geographical conditions monitoring (GCM) has been of great concern to the Chinese government. GCM has a close relation with ‘Digital China’ and is a concrete embodiment of Digital China. This paper discusses the content and classification of GCM. In accordance with application areas, GCM can be divided into fundamental monitoring, thematic monitoring, and disaster monitoring. The application areas perspective includes the content of the three other perspectives, like the monitoring elements, the monitoring scope, and the monitoring cycle and fully reflects the essence of the GCM. Fundamental monitoring mainly focuses on monitoring all of the geographical elements, which provides a basis for follow-up thematic monitoring; thematic monitoring is a special type of designated subject monitoring that concerns the public or the government; disaster monitoring focuses on the dynamic monitoring of the pre-disaster and disaster periods for natural disasters. The monitoring results will provide timely information for governments so that they can meet management or decision-making requirements. A GCM case study in the area of the Qinghai — Tibet plateau was made, and some concrete conclusions were drawn. Finally, this paper presents some thoughts on conducting GCM.

Keywords:

• geographical conditions monitoring
• fundamental monitoring
• thematic monitoring
• disaster monitoring
• Qinghai — Tibet plateau

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also would like to acknowledge every member of the GCM project team at CASM, especially Prof. Qin Yan, Zhengjun Liu, Yonghong Zhang, Chun Dong, Xiaogang Ning, Haiyan Gu, Chengfeng Luo, Rong Zhao, Fan Yu, Jing Shen and Yi Jia.

Funding

This work was funded by National Basic Surveying and Mapping Research Program – Automatic Classification with Multisource Remote Sensing Data in Complex Vegetation Coverage Area, National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China [grant number 2012BAH28B01] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41371406].

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This work was funded by National Basic Surveying and Mapping Research Program – Automatic Classification with Multisource Remote Sensing Data in Complex Vegetation Coverage Area, National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China [grant number 2012BAH28B01] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41371406].