The Internet of Things and fast data streams: prospects for geospatial data science in emerging information ecosystems

ABSTRACT

This paper surveys the rapid development of the Internet of Things, the massive data streams that are only now beginning to be generated from it, and the resulting opportunities and challenges that these data streams bring to geographic information analysis. These challenges arise because streaming data volumes cannot bt subjected to analysis using the standard repertoire of methods that have been designed to analyze static geospatial datasets. New approaches are needed, not to supplant, but to supplement, these existing tools. A focus is placed on the concept of data velocity (fast data) and its effects on sampling and inference. Innovative data ingestion strategies based on principles related to reservoir sampling and sketching are described. Dynamic temporal data flows present significant challenges to load balancing in distributed (e.g. cloud) parallel environments, even at exascale levels of performance. Further advances in the exploitation of data locality based on geographical concepts, as well as advanced processing methods based on edge and approximate computing, require further elucidation. Concepts are illustrated using a database compiled from a distributed sensor network of mobile radioactivity detectors.

KEYWORDS:

• Internet of Things
• sensors
• data streams
• fast data
• parallel computing

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the reviewers who provided useful comments that led to an improved paper. MPA wishes to thank Ben Speare for his assistance with several figures.

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based in part upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant numbers: 1047916, 1443080, and 1743184. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.