ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an overview of the keyconcepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on new big data source for regional science. It discusses the experience of the UK Consumer Data Research Centre in adapting the use of a new big data source derived from retail transactions to applications in health, energy efficiency and activity pattern analysis. The book provides a qualitative and quantitative description of floating taxi data through the presentation and comparison of datasets covering four cities, including Barcelona, Berlin, Poznan and Thessaloniki. It demonstrates the potential of using web-crawled data for regional science research and provides a demonstration of a regional study on the structure of China's service-oriented economy using a web-based information service data. The book includes contributions to integration, processing and management of big data. The book comprises a set of chapters introducing big data related analytics in regional science.