Global Pulse is pleased to publish a new White Paper, entitled “Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges.”
Innovations in technology and greater affordability of digital devices worldwide have ushered in an Age of “Big Data,” an umbrella term for the explosion in the quantity and diversity of high frequency digital data. This digital data is being produced, in real-time, at an unprecedented rate, even across the developing world. In addition, advances in computing and data science make it possible to process and analyze Big Data in real-time. But can it be useful for development, and enhancing resilience to global shocks? Can the innovations from data science and tech be applied to the field of development? If so, how?
The paper aims to highlight the opportunity, as well as some of the main concerns and challenges, raised by the opportunity of utilizing new, digital data sources in the field of international development, as concretely and openly as possible.
The paper is structured to foster dialogue around some of the following issues:
It is important to recognize that Big Data and real-time analytics are no modern panacea for age-old development challenges. That said, the diffusion of data science to the realm of international development nevertheless constitutes a genuine opportunity to bring powerful new tools to the fight against poverty, hunger and disease.
View a summary of the paper's key points below, or click here to download the PDF:
IMAGE: A visualization representing global Google search volume, by language. Developed by and courtesy of the Google Data Arts Team.
Thank you. Terrific report. As you point out, big data is less about what happened but what might and why - time for decision makers to look at data (in all its guises) differently.
It would be nice to know more about the privacy issues. Big data can surely contribute not only to business analysis but it can also play a big role in peacemaking. However, privacy questions should be eluded. The group of information together analyzed may be of public interest, but each individual information is private and should remain so. who would have access to these individuals informations?