Abstract: With the rapid development of electronic information technology, scientific research and engineering practice, a wide range and a large quantity of data have been produced continuously. The big data phenomenon has emerged. It is attracting more and more attention and application in scientific data analysis, electronic commerce and banking industry, and taking a profound impact on human life, work and thinking. Traditional data storage methods, relational databases, data processing and data analysis methods can’t meet the current needs on big data gradually. The paper introduces the definitions, characteristics, methods involved, changes brought about and simple application examples of big data. A review on history, state of art and problems of geotechnical engineering monitoring is presented. The concepts of big data naturally agree well with the geotechnical engineering monitoring. Large-scale, comprehensive, multidirectional and multifield geotechnical monitoring will become a reality in the future. The in-depth analysis capabilities such as correlation analysis, cause analysis and decision support will become the core works for the monitoring projects in the era of big data. Furthermore, the site monitoring will be promoted to the same or even more important role as the experiment, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. Thus, the geotechnical engineering workers should pay highly attention to big data research, enhancing the use of research results of big data from other disciplines. With the opportunities brought about by big data, a rapid development of geotechnical engineering monitoring will arise in the future.

Key words: big data, geotechnical engineering, monitoring, data analysis, transducer