Big Data for Sustainability

The data revolution — which encompasses the open data movement, the rise of crowd sourcing, new ICTs for data collection, and the explosion in the availability of Big Data, together with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things — is already transforming society.

In this article we would like to discuss and explore possible opportunities that this data explosion has created for sustainable development.

Many people assume that Big Data is solely used by enormous greedy multi national companies such as Google and Facebook to spy on our daily lives and predict our every move. Although many of these companies do often use data to manipulate the world around us to achieve their malevolent plans, Big Data has numerous amazing applications that could change how businesses and people look at sustainability and significantly improve the future of this big planet called Earth.

Numerous forward thinking Businesses have begun to incorporate the use of Big Data into the daily running of their company in order to reduce the harmful effects their output has on the environment.

As an example, the Italian tire company Pirelli has implemented SAP’s big data management system, HANA, to optimise inventory. It assesses data from sensors in its tires to reduce waste, diverting defective ones from landfills.

HANA has additional applications, helping energy companies maintain their grids’ peak efficiency. The Dutch company Alliander uses the management system for this exact purpose, increasing its profits while minimising its environmental impact. Other companies have seen similar success with big data technologies.

These are just small examples of companies using the amazing information technologies that are available to them in this day and age to not only improve their profits but also to develop the sustainability of their business and industry.

The key challenge is getting companies to adjust their attitudes towards improving the sustainability of their output and invest in and trust the applications that Big Data has to offer!

Governments and International communities across the Globe have also started to creatively integrate Big Data applications into how they tackle the enormous challenge of improving our sustainability.

Some clever examples of how countries and communities are using Big Data to improve the world are listed below (with links to learn more):

– Global Fishing Watch: A map that helps prevent illegal fishing, which means a reduction of geopolitical conflicts, recording the movement of more than 35,000 vessels and processing more than 37 billion messages on fishing activity.

– Climate Smart Agriculture: A project led by FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) that helps optimise the crops during the different seasons of the year.

– India Night Lights: Data collection on light intensity in India to know exactly the energy consumption and the increase or decrease of the electrical use. Thanks to this data, collected every night since 1993, the evolution of access to electricity in rural areas can be researched.

– Ocean Observatories Initiatives: Monitoring of ocean activity and real-time analysis to anticipate the risk of seabed movement and possible tsunamis.

See not all data collection is bad!

The purpose of this blog was to hopefully change readers perspectives on Big Data. Data collection is not always a villainous collection of the darkest secrets of our lives. Big data is used to tell a story. That story is how we live our lives. Scientists can use this information to develop solutions to Earth’s biggest problem – climate change. Many view technology as the problem when considering climate change and sustainability but people are never going to stop using the technology that has significantly improved their lives. As a result Governments and Businesses must turn to technology and its applications such as Big Data for solutions to the problem of our time.

References to learn more and explore the power Big Data :

Folk, E., 2020. 'How Big Data Is Transforming Environmental Sustainability'. Datafloq.com. Available at: https://datafloq.com/read/big-data-transforming-environmental-sustainability/6388

[Accessed 17 February 2020].

Un.org. 2020.'Big Data For Sustainable Development'. [online] Available at: https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/big-data-sustainable-development/index.html

[Accessed 17 February 2020].