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The Virtual Geographic Environments: More than the Digital Twin of the Physical Geographical Environments

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New Thinking in GIScience

Abstract

With past more than 20 years of development, virtual geographic environments (VGE) had gradually matured and formed its own supporting theories and remarkable characteristics. During this period, the remarkable steps forwards of VGE were often inseparable from the promotion of new technologies. Recently, the term of digital twins has emerged and attracted researchers from the community of geographic information sciences to discuss what the digital twins of the physical geographic environments should be alike. This chapter focuses on discussing the conceptual connotations and typical characteristics of both virtual geographic environments and digital twins, analyzes the basic requirements for building digital twins of physical geographic environments, and summarizes whether VGE can match the framework of digital twins of physical geographic environments. The final conclusions of this chapter declare that: The concepts and framework of VGE are essentially consistent with those of digital twins; The characteristics of VGE can absolutely meet the basic requirements of digital twins of physical geographic environments; What’s more, VGE has been more than a digital twin of the physical geographic environments, for instance, it can extensively fit well with the conceptual framework of metaverse of geographic environments which have eight characteristics including identity, friends, immersive, low friction, variety, anywhere, economy, civility.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this chapter was partially funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41771442 and No. 41271402).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Environment, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, 330022, Jiangxi, China

    Hui Lin

  2. Department of Information and Communication, The Academy of Army Armored Forces, Beijing, 100000, China

    Bingli Xu

  3. School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, 518052, Guangdong, China

    Yuting Chen

  4. Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Qi Jing

  5. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, Hubei, China

    Lan You

Authors
  1. Hui Lin
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  2. Bingli Xu
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  3. Yuting Chen
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  4. Qi Jing
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  5. Lan You
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bingli Xu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, SC, USA

    Bin Li

  2. Department of Geography, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Xun Shi

  3. Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    A-Xing Zhu

  4. Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Cuizhen Wang

  5. School of Geography and Environment, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China

    Hui Lin

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Lin, H., Xu, B., Chen, Y., Jing, Q., You, L. (2022). The Virtual Geographic Environments: More than the Digital Twin of the Physical Geographical Environments. In: Li, B., Shi, X., Zhu, AX., Wang, C., Lin, H. (eds) New Thinking in GIScience. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3816-0_3

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