从Geomatics到UrbanInformatics.

In the era of new urbanization, industrialization and informatization, China’s cities confront complex problems on the way to asustainable economy, society and ecology. Now, applications integrating Geomatics, Internet, and cloud computing technologies generate big urban data, becoming a strategic resource for the smart city. Urban informatics, a new direction in surveying, mapping and geoinformation, is developing out of the cross-fusion of Geomatics, Informatics, and urban science. Based on the unified spatial-temporal datum, urban informatics is to capture, process, analyze urban big data, and make smart decision with the help of information technology, aiming to realize the green, low carbon , and sustainable city. We discuss the relationship between Geomatics and urban informatics, and the five characteristics of urban informatics, includingthe dynamic evolution, datadriven, crowdsourced learning, collaborative decision-support, and cross-disciplinary nature of this field. Finally, we summarize scientific questions and outlook for the future of urban informatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]