Information access by Internet, computing technology and rapid development in sensors and automation technologies will facilitate the emergence of geo-agents for humans and intelligent software agents, which will enable tools for interaction and action at a distance. With smart computing chips attaching to objects of interest, and sensors on satellites operating at various altitudes, aircrafts, ships, mobile platforms, data on environmental, physical and biological events will be simultaneously collected, recorded, measured and tracked. Intelligent agent technologies that characterize a shift of paradigm from algorithms to interactive systems with problem-solving engines are capable of knowledge discovery and learning. They will become an indispensable part of the digital Earth environment and will be widely applied to such diverse fields as collaboration, and model discovery and information access.
This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends that UNEP disseminates environmental information and data to governments and to organs, programmes and organizations of the UN system.