- The Digital Model of the Noosphere    398 kb by    Dudarev, Alexey | lgil@itpgrad.ru    Short Outline The report provides an overview of the potential of information technology in planning and management of the territory’s development, by using a digital model of the dynamic interaction between society and nature on the spatial data infrastructure's basis. Abstract People who are trying to manage the development of the territory in Russia are like a tram driver, who suddenly found himself at the controls of a passenger airliner at an altitude of 11,000 meters. The engines are working fine, the autopilot is keeping a course. But where are we flying? Is it enough fuel in the tanks and what should we do to land plane at the destination? There are many displays, buttons and levers at the cockpit. Which of their combinations will lead us to success, and that will cause a catastrophe? We do not really know. Technologies of digital mapping, satellite-based measurements, communications are far ahead of understanding of the practical tasks, which solution may have a significant impact on improving people's lives. We can solve the problems of obtaining and organizing data about existing and planned objects, its automatic processing, analysis and visualization. We can provide all of these results to someone's lucid mind, to make managerial decisions on that basis. What is the effectiveness of such decisions? Are they just a reaction to the uncontrollable processes? Are the consequences of their implementation corresponding with strategic plans? Maybe cadastre, planning documentation and management system, which prohibits anything that is not officially allowed, all of this only creates the illusion of control over the development of the territory? A century ago, Academician Vernadsky argued that mankind in the course of its development becomes a new powerful ''geological force'', which is transforming the face of the planet by means of own thought and work. In order surviving, it would have to take responsibility for the development of the biosphere turning into noosphere, and this will require a certain social organization and new, both environmental and humanistic ethics. Century has ended and life's environment has changed. The global information field has risen around the Earth, it's free from the constraints of data movement. People are totally equipped with mobile devices available in this field and storing the data on the activities, the location, the time. Human life has become more public and (maybe) more valuable. Now, we have to learn how to use modern technologies in fundamentally new ways, e.g. to create a digital model of the dynamic interaction between society and nature on the spatial data infrastructure's basis, to work with it, to plan and to act so, that in that century the humanity become happier. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper