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With the growing number of gadgets and the emergence of new information technologies, data is growing exponentially. Working with big data is changing every area of human activity – from entertainment to healthcare, from security to food. Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s time to look at what role big data already plays in our lives, and what role it will play shortly.
Health and medicine
Big data has already provided significant breakthroughs in healthcare: the collection, exchange, and study of data accumulated by scientists and practitioners is moving research forward, allowing it to improve medical development, diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. However, the collection and processing of data from people who have already applied for medical care is not the most important change that big data brings to people’s health care. The best treatment is prevention. And here, work with big data is carried out on two large fronts: individual and state.
At the individual level, the accumulation of both researchers’ data and wearable device statistics allows for tracking disease risks and recommending check-ups and physical activity. At the state level, the contribution and importance of big data in healthcare are even greater, allowing experts to track the risk and threats to entire populations, plan the development of medical infrastructure, and even social and economic policies.
Security
Have you ever received a call from your bank’s security team when trying to pay for an item online with a card? This is a positive signal because it means that the security services work. However, security has its price. As an analysis of the behavior of many millions of cardholders showed, with two similar incidents within six months, when a transaction made by a user was mistaken for suspicious, expenses from a “suspicious” card in the next six months decreased, on average, by a quarter, and every fifth holder and stopped using it altogether.
It is critical for businesses not only to fight against fraud but also to make this fight as less visible to users as possible. The analysis of big data using machine learning allows you to create models of good user behavior. Thanks to working with big data, modern banks catch not only fraudulent transactions but even identity theft before they happen. Technology and big data have also made it necessary for everyone to stay safe from cyber attacks and use tools to protect themselves online.
Trade and advertising
We can consider online shopping a traditional and predictable way to use big data. Amazon was the pioneer of using big data in online sales, comparing the purchases made by their users with what others were buying and trying to predict what their customers might need or want to buy next. Now, these technologies are used in almost any large online store.
Online advertising is another important application of big data. Perhaps big data can kill advertising in its usual sense. After all, what do people usually call advertising? Obsessive informing about something unnecessary. But, all people have needs and problems, and in search of solutions, we spend a huge amount of time and effort. Advertising that meets exactly the existing needs of the user is no longer advertising, but useful advice. The result of this will be paradoxical: becoming, thanks to big data, intuitive, advertising will no longer be perceived as something negative – just the world around will be perceived as a little kinder to people, always ready to help and offer exactly what a person needs or needs here and now or in the foreseeable future.
Agriculture
Sensors and transmitters, video surveillance, and wearable devices are becoming a reality for human life and agriculture. Big data now gives farmers a detailed visualization of agricultural production processes, combined with data on food market needs, which allows them to make effective informed decisions. Also available are data on weather, soil conditions, moisture, fruit ripening, growth progress, and livestock conditions. This information allows farmers to maximize and optimize the manufacture of products for the market’s needs in real-time. Thanks to big data, the Internet of things, and the cloud, better products are becoming available to more and more people.
Real estate market
In real estate, at different stages of planning and implementing projects, Big Data technology can be applied when analyzing a site, its infrastructure features, and the predominance of certain representatives of professions in the area, which can eventually be used when designing individual residential clusters such as co-living. Companies use machine intelligence to analyze stolen photos of objects and carry out apartment market surveys thanks to big data and can identify illegal apartment rentals. Other companies are using machine learning to predict transaction conversion and optimize employee performance according to customer flow.
Big data has a huge impact on the Internet space. They have changed the way financial security, agriculture, marketing and advertising, the real estate market, and even the healthcare system work. Big data is everywhere. And their sphere of influence is only growing.
