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Big Data: Unleashing information

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Abstract

At present, it is projected that about 4 zettabytes (or 10**21 bytes) of digital data are being generated per year by everything from underground physics experiments to retail transactions to security cameras to global positioning systems. In the U. S., major research programs are being funded to deal with big data in all five sectors (i.e., services, manufacturing, construction, agriculture and mining) of the economy. Big Data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of available tools to undertake their acquisition, access, analytics and/or application in a reasonable amount of time. Whereas Tien (2003) forewarned about the data rich, information poor (DRIP) problems that have been pervasive since the advent of large-scale data collections or warehouses, the DRIP conundrum has been somewhat mitigated by the Big Data approach which has unleashed information in a manner that can support informed — yet, not necessarily defensible or valid — decisions or choices. Thus, by somewhat overcoming data quality issues with data quantity, data access restrictions with on-demand cloud computing, causative analysis with correlative data analytics, and model-driven with evidence-driven applications, appropriate actions can be undertaken with the obtained information. New acquisition, access, analytics and application technologies are being developed to further Big Data as it is being employed to help resolve the 14 grand challenges (identified by the National Academy of Engineering in 2008), underpin the 10 breakthrough technologies (compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013) and support the Third Industrial Revolution of mass customization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, 33146, USA

    James M. Tien

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  1. James M. Tien
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Correspondence to James M. Tien.

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James M. Tien received the BEE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the SM, EE and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held leadership positions at Bell Telephone Laboratories, at the Rand Corporation, and at Structured Decisions Corporation. He joined the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at RPI in 1977, became Acting Chair of the department, joined a unique interdisciplinary Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems as its founding Chair, and twice served as the Acting Dean of Engineering. In 2007, he was recruited by the University of Miami to be a Distinguished Professor and Dean of its College of Engineering. He has been awarded the IEEE Joseph G. Wohl Outstanding Career Award, the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award, the IEEE Norbert Wiener Award, and the IBM Faculty Award. He is also an elected member of the prestigious U. S. National Academy of Engineering.

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Tien, J.M. Big Data: Unleashing information. J. Syst. Sci. Syst. Eng. 22, 127–151 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11518-013-5219-4

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