An Introduction to Big Data and Its Possible Utility in the Urban Context

Abstract

The present-day cities are growing exponentially with urbanization and so is the population. Cities are a house to a major share of the population. With this ever-increasing population, cities come across many problems which cannot easily be anticipated. This is because, the phenomena which take place in a city are complex, interlinked, intertwined and form the city systems. In order to facilitate the solutions to the complex problems, complex data handling is required. In this digital age, big data has helped in expediting the solutions to those problems and has proven to be a boon for the complex city systems by making it easy to understand them. Big data has been put to use in various sectors in a city system; from mapping assets, solving various sectoral problems, streamlining governance and administrative issues and reducing the communication gap between stakeholders in a city. This paper aims at giving an insight about big data, and how it can be beneficial and advantageous for the city. Some successful case studies where big data has been put to application in cities have also been incorporated into the paper.