Big Data Science and Analytics for Tackling Smart Sustainable Urbanism Complexities

Abstract

There is much enthusiasm currently about the opportunities created by the data deluge and its new and more extensive sources in the domain of smart sustainable urbanism. This mainly involves the ability to respond to the challenges of sustainability and urbanization thanks to thinking in a data-analytic and data-intensive scientific fashion and using powerful computational processes to generate useful knowledge for enhanced decision-making and deep insights. Indeed, more innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches are needed to tackle the complexity of smart sustainable cities in terms of wicked problems. This paper explores the value of big data analytics and its uses in dealing with such complexity. Further, it analyzes how urban sustainability science can be transformed by urban science and data-intensive science thanks to big data science and analytics and the underpinning technologies. We argue that this area of science and technology embodies an unprecedentedly transformative power—manifested in the form of advancing smart sustainable urbanism and revolutionizing urban sustainability science.