Urban analytics: Definitions, disciplines, diversity and data

Paper by Hongyi Zou et al: “Urban analytics has developed as an interdisciplinary field to understand and address urban complexity. Despite rapid growth, the field remains fragmented, lacking conceptual clarity and interdisciplinary dialogue. This paper presents a comprehensive systematic review of 427 publications across relevant disciplines. Information about publication details, publication type, research objectives, research fields, methods, main data and data source, data accessibility, data representativeness, geographical and temporal scopes, ethical concerns and policy implications of each study are extracted and categorised. The following analysis traces the evolution of urban analytics, identifies methodological or thematic paucity in current research, and evaluates whether existing studies have approached urban issues in methodologically sound, ethical, and appropriate ways. The findings reveal persistent challenges in definitional contestation, data “firehose” and flood of bias, interdisciplinarity, fragmentation and uneven integration, as well as institutional and practical limits. This review further identifies emerging directions that integrate theory and practice, support responsible innovation, and promote more actionable insights for urban analytics. It also contributes a conceptual framework and research roadmap for developing responsible, context-aware and practical urban analytics that support equitable and sustainable urban futures…(More)”.