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Summary: Ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) technology is being widely used for urban roadbed damage detection. In this paper, we present the development of a cloud‐based difference detection method using big GPR data for roadbed damage detection. Unlike many processing methods relying on standalone servers, the proposed method can achieve high accuracy and processing efficiency by distributing the computation over a server cluster. The method includes a difference detection algorithm for GPR image enhancement and damage extraction, the Hadoop Distributed File System, and MapReduce distributed parallel computing framework for big GPR data parallel processing and interpretation. Moreover, to automatize roadbed damage classification, a criterion with seven grades is established based on the wave group shape, amplitude, phase, and attenuation characteristics. We validate the proposed method through a detection experiment that was conducted on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, China. The detection revealed 187 damage from the efficient processing of big GPR data, thus suggesting the ability of the proposed method to provide timely support for road safety in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]