Big Data Applications in Geography and Planning: An Essential Companion

This unique book demonstrates the utility of big data approaches in human geography and planning. Offering a carefully curated selection of case studies, it reveals how researchers are accessing big data, what this data looks like and how such data can offer new and important insights and knowledge.

Contributions from key scholars working in the field bring together an international series of case studies on demography and migration, retail and consumer analytics, health care planning, urban planning and transport studies. Chapters also discuss how data sets leveraged from commercial and public agency sources can greatly improve the data traditionally worked with in academic geography, regional science and planning. While addressing the challenges and limitations of big data, the book also demonstrates the usefulness of data sets held by commercial agencies and explores data linkage between big data and traditional public domain data sources.

Focusing on the applications of big data to investigate issues in a spatial context, this book will be an essential guide for scholars and students of planning, mobility and human geography, particularly those who specialise in economic and transport geography. Its use of key case studies to demonstrate the applications of big data analytics in planning will also be useful for planners in these fields.

Edited by Mark Birkin, Professor of Spatial Analysis and Policy, School of Geography and Director, Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, University of Leeds, Graham Clarke, School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK, Jonathan Corcoran, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Queensland and Robert Stimson, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Queensland, and Honorary Professorial Fellow of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia