Big Data, Big Impact: Possibilities for Development

During the Davos Economic Summit, there were several interesting presentations under "Big Data, Big Impact."  One presentation focused on possibilities for international development.  As San Francisco builds out its distributed smart grid in a post-peak oil world, the issues of how "Big Data" are applied becomes evermore critical to the resilience of the City and the sustainability of its neighborhoods.

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A flood of data is created every day by the interactions of billions of people using computers, GPS devices, cell phones, and medical devices. Many of these interactions occur through the use of mobile devices being used by people in the developing world, people whose needs and habits have been poorly understood until now. Researchers and policymakers are beginning to realise the potential for channelling these torrents of data into actionable information that can be used to identify needs, provide services, and predict and prevent crises for the benefit of low-income populations. Concerted action is needed by governments, development organisations, and companies to ensure that this data helps the individuals and communities who create it.

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By analysing patterns from mobile phone usage, a team of researchers in San Francisco is able to predict the magnitude of a disease outbreak half way around the world. Similarly, an aid agency sees early warning signs of a drought condition in a remote Sub-Saharan region, allowing the agency to get a head start on mobilising its resources and save many more lives.

Much attention is paid to the vital services that mobile phone technology has brought to billions of people in the developing world. But now many policy-makers, corporate leaders and development experts are realising the potential applications, like the examples above, for the enormous amounts of data created by and about the individuals who use these services.

Sources such as online or mobile financial transactions, social media traffic, and GPS coordinates now generate over 2.5 quintillion bytes of so-called „big data‟ every dayi. And the growth of mobile data traffic from subscribers in emerging markets is expected to exceed 100% annually through 2015ii.

For more information:

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_TC_MFS_BigDataBigImpact_Briefing_2012.pdf