ABSTRACT
Prior to the industrial revolution, record-keeping was an intensive but modest affair with manual technologies constraining the growth of data. Historically, data were always big with respect to the available means by which they could be manipulated. Introduced by Brian Berry, an early data typology that has withstood the test of time is the 'geographic matrix'. Real-time data pertaining to the socio-economic structure of the city are much more problematic to collect using sensing devices. Big data which are streamed in real time represents the cutting edge of new data about the functioning of cities. Since the 1950s, data have been collected in continuous time for traffic flow analysis. Data on energy flows and usage in the smart city are not focal as yet, while the analysis of big data associated with social media may well remain in some preliminary form for many years.
