Unlocking big data using location

With the Internet of Things now more accurately described as the Internet of Everything, the ever-growing connections to the internet are contributing to an ever-growing array of information within the sphere of big data.

Your smartphone can identify exactly where you are almost all of the time. Many applications will ask you for access to your location information and most will have functionality that is enabled by this reliance on knowing your exact location.

So many innovative developments have emerged from this focus on the everyday functionality associated with how humans combine connectivity and location. And they are incredibly diverse, whether it is the probe data used by telecommunications companies to determine how fast traffic is moving, or sensors attached to oysters to monitor their growth.

A US firm, Orbital Insight, has found that by looking at satellite imagery of a company’s parking lots and the rate of change of vehicle turnover in those parking lots, they can make a connection with the organisation’s financial performance at the end of the quarter. On the basis of this analysis – over a long period of time and across many car parks – Orbital Insight is actually able to very accurately predict how well an economy might perform, well ahead of other indicators.

The challenges of data management used to be storage, then capture but it has now shifted to how to provide meaningful analysis. With all types of digital data now being captured and made available, the key to making sense of the information involves finding the patterns that exist.

Traffic flows, pedestrian movements and shopping habits all appear chaotic but analysing the data using location can find the patterns that exist within masses of data. Indeed, it is estimated that upwards of 80 percent of data has some kind of geospatial relationship.

Going forward, digital 3D city models will enable us to manage our cities in smarter and more sustainable ways, by improving our understanding of how we live in cities and how to better plan for the future,

One of the key aspects of getting this analysis right though, is understanding the location associated with that information. You have to be able to anchor it, using location points that you have a high degree of confidence in to provide the means for performing the analysis across all the data.

The ability to effectively mine big data offers both government and business the opportunity to drive productivity gains and better economic outcomes. Adding location into the big data mix provides a really useful means for interpreting and analysing enormous amounts of information. After all, everything happens somewhere, making location key to unlocking powerful insights.