Big Data has quickly become an industry buzz term and with it promises of exciting opportunities for consumer intelligence. However, increasing privacy concerns and the logistics associated with data refinement bring their own unique set of challenges for marketers. In his session, Cam will outline some emerging solutions to address these concerns as well as innovative opportunities for social good through real-time data analysis.
3. Challenges: Big Oil Analogy - The oil analogy Highlights some “Oil needs to be refined before it can be useful. Big data startups are the new refineries.”- Refinement (Big Data Start ups)Storage (it’s getting cheaper by the day)
Challenge: Big Oil Analogy “Oil needs to be refined before it can be useful. Big data startups are the new refineries.”- Refinement (Big Data Start ups)- Storage (it’s getting cheaper by the day)
Challenge: Big Oil Analogy This data needs to be stored somewhere Good news though: Storage is becoming cheaper Companies are investing in having data centres for future storage requirements. Examples: Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook
Challenge: Big Brother Privacy online has always been a concern, however recently it became top of mind for most with Google’s announcement For the purposes of this examination, I’m going to split privacy concerns into two categories
Facebook: provides the environment Google: Free suite of services (search, docs, YouTube, etc)
- The Big Data that is made of our activities online, mobile usage, location-based information, etc. is by its very nature open. - To - How can we use this information to better society?
Big data has traditionally been used for good. Innovation and technology have allowed for it to be leveraged in new ways.MIT researchers have found evidence that changes in mobile phone calling patterns can be used to detect flu outbreaks; A Telefónica Research team has demonstrated that calling patterns can be used to identify the socioeconomic level of a population, which in turn may be used to infer its access to housing, education, healthcare, and basic services such as water and electricity; and researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and Columbia University have used data from Digicel, Haiti’s largest cell phone provider, to determine the movement of displaced populations after the earthquake, aiding the distribution of resources.”
Global Pulse is an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General, harnessing today's new world of digital data and real-time analytics to gain a better understanding of changes in human well-being. Global Pulse hopes to contribute a future in which access to better information sooner makes it possible to keep international development on track, protect the world's most vulnerable populations, and strengthen resilience to global shocks. Global Pulse functions as an innovation laboratory, bringing together expertise from UN agencies, governments, academia, and the private sector to research, develop, test and share tools and approaches for harnessing real-time data for more effective and efficient policy action.
Data Research. Global Pulse is discovering new indicators in digital data with the potential to give us a real-time understanding of community well being and real-time feedback on whether our policies and programmes are working.
The recent waves of global shocks – food, fuel, and financial – have revealed a wide gap between the onset of a global crisis and the availability of actionable information for decision makers to protect the world's most vulnerable populations. Traditional statistics have been effective in tracking medium- to longer- term development trends, but – given the latency of the data generated – are ineffective in generating the type of real-time information decision makers need in developing timely actions to help vulnerable populations cope with crises. Much of the data used to track progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for example, dates back to 2008 or earlier – before the onset of the current economic crisis.
- Global Pulse is building a network of Pulse Labs for developing, testing and scaling innovative tools for real-time impact monitoring, and to mainstream the new approaches into policymaking.
This research project entailed the construction of a daily bread price index for six Latin American countries. The findings illustrate how the online retail prices reveal offline street price changes weeks before official sales numbers were able to reflect the inflation, potentially allowing policy makers to better prepare for the negative effect on consumers.
Online conversations on blogs and forums about bleak job prospects and job satisfaction were occurring months in advance of actual job losses, predicting the rise of unemployment in the US and Ireland and simultaneously revealing the strategies that unemployed are pursuing to overcome their new economic situation. Analysis revealed that the increases in the volume of on-line employment-related conversations in Ireland which were characterized by “confusion” show up 3 months before increases in unemployment, while in the US conversations about the loss of housing increased 2 months after unemployment spikes.
A research analyzed Twitter data from the US and Indonesia to measure the degree to which cost pressures related to food, fuel, housing, and the economy are discussed in online conversations. The research analyzes trends in these topics in conjunction with themes such as “afford,” showing how the volume and topics of the conversations change over time reflecting populations concerns.
- UN Global Pulse partnering with the private sector - This partnership allows for refined data to be overlaid with the observed data
Global Pulse was created by the UN Secretary-General in 2009 to explore opportunities for using real-time data to gain a more accurate understanding of population wellbeing, especially related to the impacts of global crises. The availability of real-time data holds tremendous promise for helping us detect the early signs of stress on vulnerable populations. It represents an unprecedented opportunity to track the human impacts of crises as they unfold, and to get real-time feedback on how well our policy responses are working.
The Paradigm ShiftThe debate over ownership of data and the willingness to share this information