GEOSPATIAL BIG DATA OR BIG GEOSPATIAL DATA A BIBLIOMETRIC REVIEW

Abstract

The study reviews a broad body of published literature on Geospatial big data in order to analyse the nature of the research context, identify general trends in the research area, and provide future research directions. Web of Science and Scopus databases were used to collect data and convert it to information through an analysis conducted using bibliometrix R package and biblioshiny. 1114 articles were retrieved after de-duplication and the analysis shows that the term geospatial big data was first seen in the year 2012 and has captured the attention of the researchers with a yearly increase in the topic except in the year 2018 and 2021 where a decline was observed. The percentage decline between 2017 to 2018 is 6% while between 2020 to 2021 is 17%. The overall increase in the annual scientific production between 2012 to 2021 is about 95% which indicates a massive growth of interest in geospatial big data.  The results identify the country with the highest published article, most globally influential author, author with the highest average citations per year, countries research collaboration and top leading institution was also identified. The study further compared author keyword and keyword plus output using co-word analysis. Finally, the study identified gaps and proffered future research directions on which scholars can expand. The paper suggests that future research directions should focus on geospatial big data application to social media, urban planning, disaster management and the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in sustainable development.