Big Data and Location Analytics I: Concepts and Recent Developments

Big Data and Analytics have recently emerged as important areas of investigation for MIS researchers and students. Increasing interest has also been witnessed in industry and federal agencies, as evidenced by the recent White House initiative on Big Data, opportunities created by it, and value added by analyzing Big Data. At the same time, proliferation of sensors and location sensing devices such as smartphones have created an abundance of geographically referenced data. This workshop will focus on Big Data location analytics; as geo-services global annual revenues approach $300 billion, this workshop will renew attention to Big Data and Analytics theories, concepts, and technologies, and how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) enable visualization and analysis of the location component of Big Data to create added value to make better decisions. Spatial Big Data tools such as SpatialHadoop that leverage the power and sophistication of traditional Big Data enabling technologies such as Apache Hadoop will be presented and discussed. Big Data opportunities in different industries that are known to leverage geotechnology will be presented. This is part I of a two-part workshop on Big Data and Location Analytics. The conceptual foundations of Big Data and Location Analytics presented in this part of the workshop will be followed at 11:00 am by Part II of the workshop, which will focus on Location Analytics tools/solutions for Big Data. Both workshops are of interest to MIS academics and practitioners and the topic is consistent with the "Blue Ocean IS Research" theme of this year's AMCIS conference.