Big Data, Crowdsourcing, and Volunteered Geographic Information Challenge Core Conceptual Neighborhood Graph Assumptions

The big data revolution transformed how we think of data analytics in many ways. Critical amongst them are the somewhat interconnected ideas of volunteered geographic information, crowdsourcing, and the big data property of variety. The robust literature concerning conceptual neighborhood graphs in two of these cases considers objects whose datatypes are held stable between the relations under consideration. This, however, is a limiting factor in these three application spaces due to the unknown form that data will take. This paper considers two avenues for the conceptual neighborhood graph to take as directions for future research: discretization conceptual neighborhood graphs (changing between corresponding vector and raster spaces) and cartographic generalization conceptual neighborhood graphs (changing the form of the objects in question). This paper provides insights as to what considerations should be considered when embarking upon this idea and demonstrates these concepts applied to prior conceptual neighborhood graphs.