With the widespread use of mobile and sensing devices, and the popularity of online map-based services, such as navigation services, the volume of spatio-temporal data is growing rapidly. Conventional big data technologies in existing distributed systems cannot effectively process spatio-temporal big data with temporal continuity and spatial proximity. How to construct an effective index for the application requirements of spatio-temporal data in a distributed environment has become one of the hotspots of spatio-temporal big data research. Many spatio-temporal indexing methods have been proposed to support efficient query processing of spatio-temporal data. In this article, the various spatio-temporal big data indexing methods proposed by domestic and foreign researchers from 2010 to 2020 are classified and summarized according to the distributed environment and application background, and the hot issues that need to be paid attention to in the future are proposed according to the changes in application requirements Index Terms-Big Data, distributed system, spatio-temporal index. I. INTRODUCTION W ITH the maturity and widespread use of perception technology, a large number of records containing temporal and spatial marker information are generated, which are called spatio-temporal data [1]. Spatio-temporal data present multisource, heterogeneous, and multidimensional scale characteristics. Space and time are the basic attributes of spatio-temporal data and the basic characteristics of spatio-temporal data processing. With the rapid development of mobile Internet, location services and other technologies and the popularization of mobile devices, e.g., traffic trajectories [2], social media [3], remote sensing image [4], [5], climate observation [6], and other data containing spatio-temporal information rapidly accumulate, are forming a special kind of spatio-temporal big data [7]. In a general sense, spatio-temporal big data refers to the massive spatio-temporal data collection that is difficult to carry out data management, scientific computing, and value discovery within Manuscript