Founder’s Day Lecture Drowning in Data

I attended the Founder’s Day lecture at the University of Bath entitled Drowning in Data: who and what can we trust. Professor Rhind gave an introduction to big data giving examples rather than using the 3’v definition (volume, velocity and variety) which is regularly used for explaining big data. He described a framework of 3 types of data including the following

Open Data
Freely useable data
NII - National Information Infrastructure
Transparency of open data  http://data.gov.uk/

Personal Data
Held by governments and collected through statutes
(data as a commercial set)

Risks associated with this are privacy vs public benefit, keeping the data safe and the role the state has to play.

Commercial Data
Individual
Social media
Lifestyle, spending etc

He mention a BBC article which talked about data growth between 2010 and 2013 as being inaccurate but now quoted everywhere. There was no mention of the IDC data growth research .
http://idcdocserv.com/1414 or http://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/index.htm

He concluded raising questions of public trust and asked does using open data have more benefits than risks.