Advancing Computational and Spatial Social Sciences in the Era of Big Data: Opportunities and Challenges

With rapid advancement in spatial and computing technologies, coupled with the emerging big and open data sources, the contemporary social science research is being revolutionised, leading to the emergence of the new fields of Computational and Spatial Social Sciences. In this talk, I will draw on four thematical areas based on our research at the University of Queensland to talk through the diverse range of spatial data and analytical models and how these are applied to unveil urban and social changes that govern contemporary societies. These applications range from the modelling of urban growth in response to climate change and land use/planning policies, human social interactions and (un)neighbourliness in the dynamically changing urban space, spatial data analytics for public transport policies, and the use of big social media data to understand population health and health-environment interactions. I will also discuss some contemporary issues and challenges in spatial social science research, particularly relating to data security, privacy and accessibility, and new methodologies (incl. AI and machine learning) that are needed to handle the ever-increasing big data sources. Moving forward I will share some of my thoughts on future opportunities in the emerging field of Computational and Spatial Social Sciences.