Big
Data is a means to extract useful information from great volumes of
data collected from various inputs. If the data is available and
accurate, the distilled information can be useful if the project is
well conceived.
Last
week we attended a Big
Data session put on by NCA-GTUG
to highlight some successful in-use projects with Splunk
boiling down huge quantities of continuous real-time data into useful
information about monitored activities – almost real-time.
Fascinating.
Next
day I participated in a GovLoop
Webinar on Optimizing
Service With Big Data,
which outlined the expanding use of the Big Data approach in the
Government sector – and an example of effective use of police data
to reduce crime.
The
city of Santa Cruz applied Big Data tools to 10 years of collected
police crime data. They cut the data by type of crime; they sliced it
by location; they diced it by time, day of week, day of month, and
month of year, to get a detailed picture of the characteristics of
crime occurring in Santa Cruz.
Then
the process was reversed to create when,
where,
and what
predictors of crime probabilities as a data based tool to apprehend
or prevent area crime.
By
manipulation of large volumes of existing data, the police department
created a knowledgebase analogous to the instincts of long-service
patrolmen with a 'feeling' about crime activity and targets. This
predictive tool is intended to help the SCPD be more effective in the
reduction of crime. Of course, personal experience is what sets the
Doers
apart from others – this data approach is a supplement, not a
replacement for experience.
The
results bear out this supposition: property-based crime is down by
12% and burglaries down by 25% since implementing the project. Good
results, which supplement the other tools available to the police in
doing their jobs – like when the two-way radios replaced the call
boxes on the street.
This
example demonstrates a valuable subsequent use of gathered data to
glean information about patterns, trends, or other relationships
among the measured items. Two important element to a successful
project with massive volume of data is the relevancy of the project
to get usable information and the completeness and accuracy of the
input to get sound information.
What
are some Big Data applications that could create valuable information
for your operations or future planning?
1 comment:
I attended that Splunk demonstration where they were extracting value out of machine generated data. I've had to do that manually a number of times, and always found that I ended up doing it myself before I could coherently ask for the results required.
Once I had the process defined, it was still too labor intensive to attempt unless there was a big cookie coming at the end.
These tools allow us to extract more value from the data that is already gathered.
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