Advanced Analytics for Big Data

Background

“Big Data” originally meant the volume of data that could not be processed (efficiently) by traditional database methods and tools. The original definition focused on structured data, but most researchers and practitioners realize that most of the world’s information resides in unstructured data, largely in the form of text and imagery, both still and video, and in audio. Today, big data refers to data volumes in the range of tens of petabytes (10¹⁶) and beyond. Such volumes exceed the capacity of current on-line storage and processing systems. Big Data was originally described by the 3Vs (Laney 2001), but Kaisler, Armour, Espinosa, and Money (2013) have suggest two more.

Up until 30 years ago, simple business models often sufficed for international business. Globalization, brought on by advances in digital technology, information available at our fingertips, and a rapidly changing, even chaotic, international political environment, has up-ended these models. It has increased the diversity and uncertainty in outcomes when complex systems such as financial flows and markets, regional economies and political systems, and transnational threats involving multiple actors are in constant flux.