Big data in the social sciences: where are we now? [via BDE-Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies Community Group]

In advance of our “Big Data Europe Workshop: The challenges of big data for
societies in a changing world” taking place on 18 November 2015 in Luxembourg,
CESSDA and Semantic Web Company (SwC) organised a hang-out on 13 October to
discuss this topic more informally. The hangout began with an introduction to
BDE by Ivana Versic (CESSDA), followed by a presentation on the challenges,
dimensions and opportunities of big data by Martin Kaltenböck ( SwC) and by
more information on requirement elicitation from Timea Turdean (SwC).



Ivana explained that the BDE project would produce an integrated stack of tools
to manipulate, publish and use large-scale data resources. Shen explained that
the focus of the project was twofold, firstly to engage with a diverse range of
stakeholder groups representing our sixth Horizon 2020 challenge
(SC6), “Europe in a changing world – Inclusive, innovative and reflective
societies”, and secondly to design, realise and evaluate a big data
aggregator platform infrastructure.

Martin started by reminding participants that every day, we create 2.5
quintillion bytes of data, so much that 90% of the data in the world today has
been created in the last two years alone, quoting a study by IBM. The amount of
data being produced is growing exponentially, whether it comes from mobile
phones, weather sensors or social networks. Statistics are also developing and
more and more data is being produced by researchers and academia. This is a
challenge and an opportunity which requires taking care of data efficiency and
data management approaches, mechanisms and technologies. Martin went on to
present the five dimensions of big data to his mind, the five V’s: volume
(amount of data), velocity (working with real time data), variety (of sources,
formats, data types), veracity (e.g. of statistics where using you have to use
several sources to have truth in the data), value (finding an added value of
data and data management). He also explained that there was a lack of data
scientists and education in data management in Europe.

Timea presented the requirement elicitations found so far for societal challenge
six which stemmed from three sources, the online survey carried out at the
beginning of the project, interviews and the use case pilots (being carried out
in the framework of BDE). She went through the results concerning the first four
V’s of big data: volume: that there is not a lot of data in place but that it
will become increasingly important in the future, velocity: useful to have (e.g.
Google flu real time analysis of the situation), variety is very important
(economic and social science data), veracity (ensuring the data quality is
high). Comparatively speaking (across all six societal challenges), volume is
not highly important (20%), velocity is even less important, variety is over 20%
for societal challenge six, she continued.

Regarding long-term preservation of data, SC6 has the infrastructure in place,
and regarding data processing it is done mostly on small samples of data, which
is consistent with the finding mentioned above concerning the little importance
of volume.

A summary written by Eleanor Smith,
Senior Communications Officer of CESSDA
www.cessda.net

 You can watch the “SC6 – Hang Out: Successful data management in the Social
Sciences and Humanities” on YouTube
 Come visit us at the European Data Forum 2015 (EDF2015), from 16 to 17
November in Luxembourg:

Read about our “Big Data Europe Workshop: The challenges of big data for
societies in a changing world” taking place on 18 November 2015 in
Luxembourg,on 18 November here (fully booked, waiting list).


Trackback from your site.

Eleanor Smith

Please see here: http://cessda.net/About-us/Staff



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'Big data in the social sciences: where are we now?'

https://www.w3.org/community/bde-societies/2015/11/04/big-data-in-the-social-sciences-where-are-we-now/



Learn more about the BDE-Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and
reflective societies Community Group: 

https://www.w3.org/community/bde-societies

Received on Wednesday, 4 November 2015 09:19:58 UTC