Big data and human geography: Opportunities, challenges and risks
Abstract
We are entering an era of big data – data sets that are characterised by high volume, velocity, variety, exhaustivity, resolution and indexicality, relationality and flexibility. Much of these data are spatially and temporally referenced and offer many possibilities for enhancing geographical understanding, including for post-positivist scholars. Big data also, however, poses a number of challenges and risks to geographic scholarship and raises a number of taxing epistemological, methodological and ethical questions. Geographers need to grasp the opportunities whilst at the same time tackling the challenges, ameliorating the risks and thinking critically about big data as well as conducting big data studies. Failing to do so could be quite costly as the discipline gets left behind as others leverage insights from the growing data deluge.
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The quality of the results of learning analytics on big data is dependent on the quality of the questions asked.
“Researchers agree that the quality of the results of LA on big data is dependent on the quality of the questions asked (e.g., Kitchin, 2013;Prinsloo & Slade, 2017).”
From Using learning analytics to understand student perceptions of peer feedback (2021) · cites this paper as Kitchin, 2013
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- Authors
- Kitchin, R.
- Affiliations
- National University of Ireland (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Kitchin, Rob
- ORCID
- Kitchin, Rob
- Venue
- Dialogues in Human Geography
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-11
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 262-267
- ISSN
- 2043-8206 (ISSN-L)
- 2043-8214
- OpenAlex
- W2052611239
- Cited by
- 593
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 44 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 53 · 2021: 54 · 2020: 62 · 2019: 56 · 2018: 60 · 2017: 63 · 2016: 46 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 77.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2018-02-26)
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Dialogues in Human Geography (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Big Data Technologies and Applications
- Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development › Geographic Information Systems Studies
- Social Sciences › Transportation › Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis
- Keywords
- big data, human geography, geospatial data, research ethics, methodological issues, post-positivism, data deluge
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