Due to development of communication technologies, the amount of data, which each organization has to deal with, has been rapidly growing. The huge volumes of data appear as an opportunity to improve the performance and reliability of various applications, as such routing and navigation services can be named. However, the analysis of large datasets, commonly referred to as “Big Data,” has been a huge challenge due to the lack of suitable analysis tools and adequate computing resources. In parallel, the rapidly growing number of crowdsourcing platforms also generates huge volumes of volunteered geographic information (VGI), which also require analysis to reveal their potential. How existing techniques for dealing with Big Data could be useful for the analysis of VGI remains an open question, since VGI differs from traditional data in essence. In a chapter of a new book that has just been publsihed, we focus on examining the latest developments and issues associated with big data from the perspective of the analysis of VGI. This chapter notably explores the current state of Big Data, highlighting the opportunities that are created by the emergence of Big VGI and crowdsourced data to improve routing and navigation services, as well as the challenges that remain to be addressed to fully exploit Big VGI. Some avenues for future research on the next generation of collaborative routing and navigation services are also suggested.
Further Reading:
Bakillah, M., Lauer, J., Liang, S., Zipf, A., Jokar Arsanjani, J., Mobasheri, A., Loos, L., 2014: Exploiting Big VGI to Improve Routing and Navigation Services, in Karimi H, Big Data Techniques and Technologies in Geoinformatics.