A method for integrating GIS and big data platforms

Abstract

Geographic Information System (GIS) has been played an important role in many applications of our daily life since 1970. Recently, with the rapid development of new technologies, earth’s data increases explosively. Many studies have been proposed to extend big data platforms with spatial data storage and processing. GIS users, however, still need a method to work with a large of data sets with traditional tools. This paper proposes a method to integrate ArcMap with Apache Hadoop and its ecosystem. The method has two phases including database creating and querying in Apache Hive. There are two tools following the proposed method are developed for illustration purpose. The experiment results on a data set of taxi trips in a year show that the method impressively improves the query performance.