Geospatial Big Data for Urban Sustainability Science

Urban sustainability has long been a major theme of city planning and development that seeks to optimize the socioeconomic and environmental circumstances to enhance the living environment for residents. It underlines that cities are complex urban systems shaped by a wide range of human activities and built environments, thus suggesting the necessity to understand our living cities. Having realized the promising potentials of contemporary geospatial big data for capturing complex urban contexts and dynamics, a principal research question is proposed: How can geospatial big data help us to better understand the growing complexities of cities, with the purpose of generating novel insights that can enhance decision-making in the pursuit of urban sustainability. This chapter seeks to discuss and illustrate the opportunities for employing geospatial big data to cope with increasing sustainability concerns. Having reviewed relevant case studies, three applications using geospatial big data are illustrated, including agglomeration economies, urban freight, and urban functions. In the context of urban sustainability, evidence implies that the massive volume and multi-dimensional sensing capability shown by geospatial big data are unique superiorities to better perceive the human dynamics and socioeconomic issues in cities.