Abstract: Human being-oriented Observation has been a basic application requirement for a long time. The popularization of big data brought about by the development of modern information and communication technology has greatly promoted the progress of the theory, technology and application of human being-oriented observation, and also greatly deepened the interdisciplinary intersection of surveying and mapping, remote sensing, geography, urban science and so on. In terms of theory, it is mainly embodied in the development of the three levels of population perception, feature measurement, and effect observation, especially the theory of systematic expression, modeling and evolution from the perspective of spatio-temporal process of crowd, which has the characteristics of foundation, polymorphism, and systematization, and is in line with the development trend of people-oriented theory. In terms of technology, it is mainly reflected in the technological progress at the level of multi-source perception of crowds, intelligent calculation of spatio-temporal characteristics, and analysis and response of spatio-temporal effects, especially the perception technology, platform technology, and decisionmaking technology represented by spatio-temporal GIS and artificial intelligence technology, which have good versatility and adaptability, and are in line with the technical trends and characteristics of GeoAI. In terms of application, human being-oriented observation technology has been widely used in many industries within and between cities, such as public safety, intelligent transportation, social governance, life and health, urban agglomeration development, extreme and other neighborhood platforms and service systems, which have promoted the spatial perception, research and judgment, prediction, early warning, decision-making, governance, coordination and integrated solution of various social problems from the perspective of complex social systems. Human being-oriented observation has developed into a frontier direction of deep cross-integration of surveying, mapping and remote sensing with other disciplines, and has a wide range of theoretical research and application needs.