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Encyclopedia of Big Data pp 1–3Cite as

Big Geo-Data

Synonyms

Big georeferenced data; Big geospatial data; Geospatial big data; Spatial big data

Definition/Introduction

Big geo-data is an extension to the concept of big data with emphasis on the geospatial component and under the context of geography or geosciences. It is used to describe the phenomenon that large volumes of georeferenced data (including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data) about various aspects of the Earth environment and society are captured by millions of environmental and human sensors in a variety of formats such as remote sensing imageries, crowdsourced maps, geotagged videos and photos, transportation smart card transactions, mobile phone data, location-based social media content, and GPS trajectories. Big geo-data is “big” not only because it involves a huge volume of georeferenced data but also because of the high velocity of generation streams, high dimensionality, high variety of data forms, the veracity (uncertainty) of data, and the complex...

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Further Readings

  • Gao, S., Li, L., Li, W., Janowicz, K., & Zhang, Y. (2017). Constructing gazetteers from volunteered big geo-data based on Hadoop. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 61, 172–186.

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  • Janowicz, K., van Harmelen, F., Hendler, J., & Hitzler, P. (2015). Why the data train needs semantic rails. AI Magazine, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pp. 5–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, H. J., & Goodchild, M. F. (2015). Data-driven geography. Geo Journal, 80(4), 449–461.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, S. L., Tsou, M. H., & Ye, X. (2016). Editorial: Human dynamics in the mobile and big data era. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(9), 1687–1693.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Yang, C., Huang, Q., Li, Z., Liu, K., & Hu, F. (2017). Big data and cloud computing: Innovation opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Digital Earth, 10(1), 13–53.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Song Gao

Authors
  1. Song Gao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Song Gao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Laurie A. Schintler

  2. School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Connie L. McNeely

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Gao, S. (2017). Big Geo-Data. In: Schintler, L., McNeely, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Big Data. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32001-4_492-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32001-4_492-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-32001-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-32001-4

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