A forum on big data and human geography has just been published in Dialogues in Human Geography 3(3), November 2013.  It includes a paper by Rob Kitchin on the opportunities, challenges and risks of big data to geographic scholarship.  Here’s a full list of contributions:

Mark Graham and Taylor Shelton: Geography and the future of big data, big data and the future of geography, pp. 255-261,

Rob Kitchin: Big data and human geography: Opportunities, challenges and risks, pp. 262-267

Evelyn Ruppert: Rethinking empirical social sciences, pp. 268-273

Michael Batty: Big data, smart cities and city planning, pp. 274-279

Michael F Goodchild: The quality of big (geo)data, pp. 280-284

Sean P Gorman: The danger of a big data episteme and the need to evolve geographic information systems, pp. 285-291

Sandra González-Bailón: Big data and the fabric of human geography, pp. 292-296

Trevor J Barnes: Big data, little history, pp. 297-302