Geoinformatics and Social Media: A New Big Data Challenge

We recently contributed a chapter to “Big Data: Techniques and Technologies in Geoinformatics” entitled “Geoinformatics and Social Media: A New Big Data Challenge” where we explore how social media and ambient geographic information is transforming geoinformatics. We discuss the key characteristics of big geosocial data beofre moving onto geosocial complexity.  Specifically how goeosocial data is predominantly linked information; links are established among users to establish a social network and among words to define a storyline that is communicated through pieces of information. Aggregating all these connections (links) provides us with a view of the users as a structured, networked community that can be represented as a graph. We then turn to modeling and analyzing geosocial multimedia before concluding with an outlook pertaining to the grand challenges and opportunities for big geosocial data.

Full reference:

Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J., Stefanidis, A., Vatsavai, R. R. and Wayant, N. (2014), Geoinformatics and Social Media: A New Big Data Challenge, in Karimi, H. (ed.), Big Data Techniques and Technologies in Geoinformatics. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 207-232. (pdf)