LandQ(upsilon 2): A MapReduce-Based System for Processing Arable Land Quality Big Data

Arable land quality (ALQ) data are a foundational resource for national food security. With the rapid development of spatial information technologies, the annual acquisition and update of ALQ data covering the country have become more accurate and faster. ALQ data are mainly vector-based spatial big data in the ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) shapefile format. Although the shapefile is the most common GIS vector data format, unfortunately, the usage of ALQ data is very constrained due to its massive size and the limited capabilities of traditional applications. To tackle the above issues, this paper introduces LandQ(upsilon 2), which is a MapReduce-based parallel processing system for ALQ big data. The core content of LandQ(upsilon 2) is composed of four key technologies including data preprocessing, the distributed R-tree index, the spatial range query, and the map tile pyramid model-based visualization. According to the functions in LandQ(upsilon 2), firstly, ALQ big data are transformed by a MapReduce-based parallel algorithm from the ESRI Shapefile format to the GeoCSV file format in HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System), and then, the spatial coding-based partition and R-tree index are executed for the spatial range query operation. In addition, the visualization of ALQ big data with a GIS (Geographic Information System) web API (Application Programming Interface) uses the MapReduce program to generate a single image or pyramid tiles for big data display. Finally, a set of experiments running on a live system deployed on a cluster of machines shows the efficiency and scalability of the proposed system. All of these functions supported by LandQ(upsilon 2) are integrated into SpatialHadoop, and it is also able to efficiently support any other distributed spatial big data systems.