Computer technology is changing and growing quickly and there is a variety of new uses already in place for many of these various technologies. Big data is an area that is growing quickly, and it is helping those in a variety of different sectors with quite a few different tasks, including some that you might not initially imagine. Since the amount of data in the world is doubling every 18 months, it’s only natural there is so much interest in what it can do.
The advances in technology today do allow for some rather amazing things. The following are five of the most interesting and unusual ways that big data is coming into play today.
Use #1: Tracking Illegal Activity
The government is a proponent of big data for a number of different reasons. One of those reasons is that it can help to make it a bit easier for them to track certain types of illegal activity on the web. DARPA created a program called Memex, which allows law enforcement the ability to look into the “deep web” and to gather information on things such as human trafficking.
They can use this information, combined with information from the regular web and their own LE databases as a means to further their investigations. Big data and advances in computer technology help to save them a substantial amount of time.
Use #2: Digging Into the Past
Another one of the uses of big data that many people do not consider comes from genealogy sites such as Ancestry.com. Most see them merely as a place to find some information about their family history. Of course, to do that, the site has more than 11 billion entries that include birth and death records and historical records. They have advanced systems in place as a means to index and sort this content, which is sometimes even handwritten.
Use #3: Medical Records
Along similar lines as the genealogy records, big data is doing wonders for medical records. By having medical records in one central and safe location, hospitals and medical centers are finding some very serious advantages. Patients do not have to worry about the hospital misplacing or losing their records, and they can be available from one clinic to another without actually needing to have a physical copy. It also helps to ensure the doctors are working from the correct and most accurate records. This gives patients and the hospitals far more peace of mind.
Use #4: Better Community Management
Miami-Dade County in Florida, along with IBM’s Smart Cities Initiative, is combining operations from 35 different municipalities to help them work together and to make unified decisions regarding the management of areas of the cities that affect one another. For example, they are working to improve their water resource management, reduction of traffic problems, and an overall improvement for public safety. Big data shared amongst these municipalities is making all of this possible.
Use #5: Improving Finances
Big data and analytics help investors to make trading decisions. By combining a larger amount of data, the analytics become more accurate, allowing the users to make better investment and trading decisions. While they will never entirely remove the human element from trading, the information gleaned via big data can be a huge help to those who are making trades.