There has been a recent marked increase in the amount of spatial data collected by smart phones, space telescopes, and medical devices, among others. The increased volume has brought into focus the need for specialized systems to handle big spatial data.

The Era of Big Spatial Data summarizes the state-of-the-art in this area. It classifies the existing work by considering six aspects of big spatial data systems, namely, approach, architecture, language, indexing, querying, and visualization. It describes each of these components in detail and gives examples of how they are implemented in existing systems. It also provides the reader with case studies of real applications that make use of these systems to provide services for end users.

This is an invaluable reference for researchers or practitioners interested in getting a handle on the state of the art for Big Spatial Data storage and querying.