China's geographic information industry takes the lead globally

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

China's surveying, mapping and geo-information industry has reached a new high level of the history and made breakthroughs in constructions of many projects, said Xu Deming, the director-general of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information recently.

China's realm of surveying and mapping has taken the lead globally in various aspects. For example, China has realized the full coverage of the 1 to 50,000 basic geo-information data; China has started carrying out the nationwide digital urban construction in large scales; China's governmental departments are building up Internet map service websites and have approved projects of monitoring national geographic conditions.

In addition, in the technological system of data acquisition, China has preliminarily established a world-level remote sensing satellite group operation system and airborne remote sensing operation system. A remote sensing monitoring system covering the sky, air and ground has been formed in China.

China's independent research level and technological level in the area of high-grade, precision and advanced instruments of surveying and mapping are still lower than these of developed countries, Xu said.

However, the launch of its first civil high-resolution cartographic satellite in January 2012 indicates that the development of China's surveying and mapping geo-information equipment has made an important and practical breakthrough. From the first batch of photographs and data sent back by the satellite, it could be seen that the quality of photographs are better than the photographs sent by foreign satellites of the same resolution.