Kolloquium Geoinformatik Big data for Detecting Human Activities

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase in our ability to collect data from various mobile devices, sensors and the Internet. This has created an opportunity to capture human activities, which were, however, difficult to obtain. In this presentation, I will give a brief introduction to big data including an analysis of their pros and cons. Subsequently, I will discuss our recent work on using big data to detect urban structure and urban vibrancy and to estimate population-weighted air pollution exposure. Gathering the dynamic distribution of population, our studies are expected to gain more insights into the human behavior in relation to space and time, thereby facilitating the development of more informed spatial plans and designs.