Spatial Technology and Social Media in Remote Sensing: A Survey

Abstract

The rapid development of social media data and the associated growth in volume, velocity, and variety has fostered the idea of using these data to guide traditional remote sensing image retrieval and information extraction tasks. Although important progress has been made in recent years in harvesting spatial and temporal data from social media, the exploitation of these data for decision making still needs further investigation, particularly in the context of its integration with remote sensing and geographic information systems. In this paper, we first discuss the relation between localization techniques and spatial technologies, pointing out their similarities and differences. Then, we provide a discussion on location analysis of social media data, and the fusion of multiple data sources, with specific attention to the integration of social media content (including localization) with remote sensing-based spatial technologies. Next, we provide specific examples addressing the use of social media data to perform information extraction from large remote sensing data repositories. Although significant possibilities for the integration of localization and spatial technologies can be seen in the examples provided, our survey suggests that the convergence of remote sensing and social media data will continue to deeply transform these technologies.