Big data is a technology that has the potential to analyze vast amounts of data to predict the future. There are growing expectations that it can solve social problems such as crime prevention, but a mature infrastructure and specialized personnel are essential for its successful use.
It’s a scary world, with countless crimes happening right now, and we or someone we know could become a victim at any moment. Crimes such as murder and sexual assault leave irreparable scars on the victims, which can be difficult to recover from for the rest of their lives. For this reason, it’s more important to prevent crimes than to punish them. Due to the severity of these crimes, strong preventive measures are required by society at large. Preventive measures such as wearing electronic anklets and disclosing the identity of sexual assault offenders are being implemented, but these efforts are not enough to solve the problem. So, is it really impossible for us to predict and prevent these crimes?
To find the answer to this question, we need to turn our attention to big data technology. Big data is a technology that collects, stores, manages, and analyzes vast amounts of structured or unstructured data that cannot be handled by traditional database management tools to derive valuable information. Many countries and companies recognize big data technology as a key technology for the future, and South Korea has announced the ‘Big Data Industry Development Strategy’ through ‘Government 3.0’ to make big data a key driver of the creative economy. Thanks to this interest, the big data market is expected to continue to grow over the next five years.
In fact, data analysis technology has been around for a long time, but why has the term “big data” gained so much attention in recent years? The reason is the rapid increase in the amount of information and the dramatic improvement in the computational and analytical capabilities of computers. With data generated in recent years accounting for 90% of the data that humans have ever accumulated, we are living in a world of information. Even in our daily lives, smart devices, computers, and the internet are generating huge amounts of data that can be analyzed to provide new insights.
Big data is still evolving, but it’s already being practically utilized in a variety of fields. For example, website search statistics and social media data can be used to predict market movements, and there are even Twitter funds that invest based on data generated by Twitter. It’s also possible to analyze consumer behavior patterns to create marketing strategies. As you can see, big data plays a key role in many industries, including retail, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. In particular, retailers are leveraging their networks to generate distribution data and use it to drive sales strategies, while financial firms are using big data to create more sophisticated strategies for customer management, risk management, and marketing.
The opportunities presented by big data are open to everyone. Big data can be utilized to speed up decision-making, predict market trends, and prepare timely responses. Data analytics can also be used to automate tasks, eliminate redundancies, and stabilize processes. However, in order to realize these benefits, it is essential to have the infrastructure and capabilities to properly utilize big data. Market research firm Gartner predicts that more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies will fail to leverage big data for competitive advantage.
A mature IT organizational culture is essential to successfully leverage big data. It’s unrealistic to expect big data to deliver results if you can’t even run your information systems properly. It is also important to have people with a deep understanding of both IT and business domains, and data scientists with statistical and mathematical knowledge. Without this environment, big data adoption is unlikely to yield significant results. It’s not enough to just adopt big data technology; it’s important to lay the groundwork for effective utilization.
After all, big data isn’t just about collecting and analyzing data, it’s about what you do with it. With the right infrastructure and organization in place, big data can contribute to solving a variety of social problems and even provide answers to complex issues such as crime prevention.
