Empowering GIS with Big Data: A review of recent advances

In the past few decades, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) was efficient with servers that could handle the amount of data used. However, as geographical big data grows in size and complexity, storing, managing, processing, analyzing, visualizing, and confirming data quality becomes more difficult. Academia, industry, government, and other institutions are increasingly interested in this information. It’s known as Big Data. Since that kind of data recently became massive, there was a need to develop methods to deal with big data and analyze it to keep pace with development. In this paper, we review the previous studies that involve both Big Data and GIS in different applications. Moreover, we focus on the field of agriculture, which is considered one of the most important sources of the economy. Produced results in this research area help decision-makers to make sound executive steps to reach better production.