Information from China’s national meeting of directors at the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping shows that following the completion of China’s first digital city geospatial framework construction project, the country plans to build 100 digital cities to promote its overall geospatial framework construction.

The construction of digital cities is a major part of China’s digital geospatial framework construction. Mainly based on basic geographic information of cities and related information databases, this project aims to build a unified and authoritative geospatial information public platform, promote the integration, sharing, and full use of information resources, and accelerate the information processes of cities.

As the first model of digital city in China, the digital Taiyuan project improved the basic geographic information database, established a new digital Taiyuan geographic information public platform, formed three datasets, and developed five application demonstration systems.

According to the meeting, the overall scale of China’s geographic information industry reached CNY75 billion in 2009, with an over 20% annual growth. About 400,000 people were working in this industry for over 10,000 organizations.