New Horizons for a Data-driven Economy : A Roadmap for Usage and Exploitation of Big Data in Europe

In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different sectors of the economy.

The book is structured in four parts: Part I “The Big Data Opportunity” explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission’s BIG project. Part II “The Big Data Value Chain” details the complete big data lifecycle from a technical point of view, ranging from data acquisition, analysis, curation and storage, to data usage and exploitation. Next, Part III “Usage and Exploitation of Big Data” illustrates the value creation possibilities of big data applications in various sectors, including industry, healthcare, finance, energy, media and public services. Finally, Part IV “A Roadmap for Big Data Research” identifies and prioritizes the cross-sectorial requirements for big data research, and outlines the most urgent and challenging technological, economic, political and societal issues for big data in Europe.

This compendium summarizes more than two years of work performed by a leading group of major European research centers and industries in the context of the BIG project. It brings together research findings, forecasts and estimates related to this challenging technological context that is becoming the major axis of the new digitally transformed business environment.                                                           

José María Cavanillas is currently R&D&I Director in Atos since 2000. He is Master Engineer in Telecommunications in Madrid Technical University (UPM) and has completed post-graduate studies in Business Administration and International Trade from CEPADE. In the last 20 years his team has been involved in more than 200 R&D&I projects.

Edward Curry is a Research Scientist at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. His research interests include smart cities, energy intelligence, semantic information management, event based systems, and collaborative data management. He has worked extensively with industry and government advising on the adoption patterns, practicalities, and benefits of new technologies.

Wolfgang Wahlster is the Director and CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and a Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University (Saarbrücken, Germany). He has published more than 170 technical papers and 8 books on language technology and intelligent user interfaces.