Urban Computing: Tackling Urban Challenges Using Big Data

Abstract

Urban computing is a process of acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in cities to tackle urban challenges, e.g. air pollution, energy consumption and traffic congestion. Urban computing connects unobtrusive and ubiquitous sensing technologies, advanced data management and analytics models, and novel visualization methods, to create win-win-win solutions that improve urban environment, human life quality, and city operation systems. Urban computing is an inter-disciplinary field where computer science meets urban planning, transportation, economy, the environment, sociology, and energy, etc., in the context of urban spaces. In this talk, I will overview the framework of urban computing, discussing its key challenges and methodologies from computer science's perspective. This talk will also present a diversity of urban computing applications, ranging from big data-driven environmental protection to transportation, from urban planning to urban economy. The research has been not only published at prestigious conferences but also deployed in the real world. More details can be found on the homepage of urban computing1.