Pervasive location acquisition technologies: Opportunities and challenges for geospatial studies

The rapid development and increasing availability of various location acquisition technologies provide geospatial studies with both opportunities and challenges. These opportunities and challenges are discussed in this paper focusing on the following three aspects: the massive acquisition of location data and data quality, the analysis of massive location data and pattern discovery, and privacy protection for massive location data. This paper examines the current status of and the potential opportunities for geospatial research in these three areas and notes the major challenges. Finally, the development of this special issue is described, and the four articles included in this special issue are presented.