Big Data Computing for Geospatial Applications

Abstract

The convergence of big data and geospatial computing has brought challenges andopportunities to GIScience with regards to geospatial data management, processing, analysis,modeling, and visualization. This special issue highlights recent advancements in integrating newcomputing approaches, spatial methods, and data management strategies to tackle geospatial bigdata challenges and meanwhile demonstrates the opportunities for using big data for geospatialapplications. Crucial to the advancements highlighted here is the integration of computationalthinking and spatial thinking and the transformation of abstract ideas and models to concrete datastructures and algorithms. This editorial first introduces the background and motivation of thisspecial issue followed by an overview of the ten included articles. Conclusion and future researchdirections are provided in the last section.