Development of GIS Integrated Big Data Research Toolbox (BigGIS-RTX) for Mobile CDR Data Processing in Disasters Management

Abstract

This article reports the development of a geographical information system (GIS) embedded text-based geospatial Big Data research toolbox (BigGIS-RTX) designed especially for mobile CDR (Call Details Record) data processing in urban transport planning and disaster management. BigGIS-RTX is a standalone computer program that aims to provide a bridge between geospatial Big Data and end users (i.e. students and researchers) by reducing difficulties in handling geospatial Big Data processing and analysis tasks. This research toolbox makes it possible to handle text-based geospatial Big Data cleaning, formatting, subsetting, and extraction by keywords or structured query language (SQL), CDR data aggregation by base transceiver stations (BTSs), generation of origin–destination (OD) trips, OD matrices, and OD routes, and computation of OD links. Moreover, this research toolbox can be integrated with current commercial GIS software to perform further geospatial analysis functions to improve spatial decision making in urban and transport planning and disaster management. In this report, we discuss two current research outputs using BigGIS-RTX: first, multitemporal grid square population estimation and second, human mobility studies in transportation planning. These research outputs are essential for disaster management and emergency preparedness in terms of providing knowledge and information about population distribution changes over space and time, human mobility flow by a user defined time frame, and travel volume or link count information for individual road segments. This research is part of the core project “Development of a Comprehensive Disaster Resilience System and Collaboration Platform in Myanmar” in a research collaboration between Yangon Technological University, Myanmar, and The University of Tokyo, Japan, sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).