IAEG supports the Open Science Forum of DDE Big Science Program at UNESCO

On November 9, 2022, the Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) Open Science Forum was successfully held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. This forum systematically demonstrated the main achievements of the DDE Big Science Program since its initiation, and announced the global launch of the first version of the DDE public infrastructure platform “Deep-time.org”. This forum marks that DDE has been widely recognized by various international organizations such as UNESCO, and an international cooperation situation has been formed.

DDE was launched by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in early 2019 and is the first Big Science initiative of IUGS. DDE aims to aggregate global geoscience big data, promote data-driven geoscience discoveries, and realize a paradigm revolution in geoscience research and industrial applications.

“Six Maps of Africa (i.e., Geology, Geomorphology, Groundwater, Geothermal, Earthquake and Disaster)” are the highlights of this DDE Forum. Prof. Hengxing LAN, our IAEG member and the President of Commission 37, quickly organized his research team at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), worked on the data collection and risk analysis of landslides in Africa, compiled an updated African landslide catalog, and further did a quantitative analysis of landslide susceptibility in Africa, producing a series of African landslide susceptibility map. Relevant results were put online on GlobalLayer, DDE’s professional mapping platform, and presented at this DDE Forum as one major highlight. This series of African landslide susceptibility map received special attention from the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO.

IAEG is a member of IUGS, and officially became a founding member of DDE in 2021. The Chinese engineering geology committee quickly responded to the IAEG’s decision to join the DDE. Under the guidance of Academician Prof. Jianbing PENG, our IEAG Secretary General Prof. Faquan WU and IAEG Vice President Prof. Huiming TANG had convened Chinese engineering geology professionals to set up the Chinese action group for DDE engineering geology. The Chinese action group, with Prof. Huiming TANG as the leader and Prof. Hengxing LAN as the executive leader, will continue to organize personnel to carry out relevant work to fully support the DDE International Big Science Program.

African landslide catalog and susceptibility map