Three innovative projects show us that the Big Data can help change the world.
In the same way, we can say that for the past few years the Big Data It is already a part of our daily lives, and we can say with confidence that there is still great potential in this wonderful tool that we have yet to discover.
Big data has proven to be a fantastic asset for companies, in terms of sales and marketing, We can say that there is no tool as powerful as the Big Data. In fact, the most important digital services today, such as Spotify, Amazon, Google and others, would not exist were it not for the advances made in Big Data, which allows them to truly capitalize on the enormous amount of information they handle.
On this journey toward discovering the true potential of the Big Data, we're sure to find a significant number of failures, but on the other hand, we may also discover projects and ideas that were previously unthinkable and that have great potential to significantly shape the future. Here are three of them:
1. Big Data and the Protection of Endangered Species
One of the most important features of the Big Data is to analyze large amounts of data in order to identify patterns and make predictions. With this in mind, a team of scientists from the Snow Leopard Trust and the National Conservation Foundation They have implemented a big data system to predict where and when there was a high probability that poachers would attempt to illegally hunt tigers in India.
The dataset used for this purpose included tiger sightings, as well as the exact locations of cases involving the illegal hunting of these same animals. As a result of the study, approximately 73 areas of high illegal activity were identified, the vast majority of which came as a surprise to local authorities. This has given new hope to endangered species around the world.
2. Eradicating Malaria Using Cell Phones and Big Data
Approximately 400,000 children die each year from malaria, and this is partly due to the lack of information on this matter. This disease is particularly devastating in developing countries such as Africa, where it is truly difficult to keep infections and large-scale outbreaks under control.
The good news is that mobile phone service has reached every corner of the world, generating a vast and significant amount of information about its users. Until now, due to the immense volume of data, it had been impossible to harness it for the benefit of human well-being. With this new opportunity, various researchers and even the company Google have been launched with the aim of using this information to create a monitoring of migration patterns of people in high-risk areas in order to identify and prevent potential outbreaks of infection
3. Quantifying “green” in our cities
MIT's Department of Urban Planning and Analysis has developed the project Treepedia under the concept of “Smart Cities”. Where they have been able to use the images recorded on the services of geolocation the most common ones, such as Google Street View to identify and quantify the proportion of green, that is, public green spaces, which are part of the scenery we see as we walk through cities.
By analyzing these images and processing them with Big Data have managed to obtain a “Green View Index”“among the world’s most important cities, successfully identifying significant shortcomings in public green spaces in the cities where we live. This serves as a foundation for future urban development and for the upcoming urban planning measures that must be taken to improve the cities of the future.”.
With these few examples, we can see how technology, combined with human ingenuity, has unparalleled potential for finding creative solutions to problems, no matter how big or small they may be. A tool like the Big Data, which at first glance may seem like just another tool for sales and marketing, has the potential to help change the world of the future.
