Analytics of location-based big data for smart cities: Opportunities, challenges, and future directions

The growing ubiquity of location/activity sensing technologies and location-based services (LBS) has led to a large volume and variety of location-based big data (LocBigData), such as location tracking or sensing data, social media data, and crowdsourced geographic information. The increasing availa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers, environment and urban systems environment and urban systems, 2021-11, Vol.90, p.101712, Article 101712
Main Authors: Huang, Haosheng, Yao, Xiaobai Angela, Krisp, Jukka M., Jiang, Bin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Big Data
Bluetooth
Data analytics
Digital media
Geodata
Location based services
Location-based big data (LocBigData)
Random sampling
Research agenda
Smart cards
Smart cities
Social networks
Spatial data
State-of-the-art review
State-of-the-art reviews
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Summary:The growing ubiquity of location/activity sensing technologies and location-based services (LBS) has led to a large volume and variety of location-based big data (LocBigData), such as location tracking or sensing data, social media data, and crowdsourced geographic information. The increasing availability of such LocBigData has created unprecedented opportunities for research on urban systems and human environments in general. In this article, we first review the common types of LocBigData: mobile phone network data, GPS data, Location-based social media data, LBS usage/log data, smart card travel data, beacon log data (WiFi or Bluetooth), and camera imagery data. Secondly, we describe the opportunities fueled by LocBigData for the realization of smart cities, mainly via answering questions ranging from “what happened” and “why did it happen” to “what's likely to happen in the future” and “what to do next”. Thirdly, pitfalls of dealing with LocBigData are summarized, such as high volume/velocity/variety; non-random sampling; messy and not clean data; and correlations rather than causal relationships. Finally, we review the state-of-the-art research trends in this field, and conclude the article with a list of open research challenges and a research agenda for LocBigData research to help achieve the vision of smart and sustainable cities.
ISSN:0198-9715
1873-7587
1873-7587
DOI:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2021.101712