Big Data – what‘s next?
The flood of information – an issue at the Research Forum Adlershof
Growing amounts of data and rapid developments in information technology are confronting Adlershof-based companies with new challenges. Events like the Research Forum Adlershof are bringing companies and researchers together – together they want to move forward in the world of “big data”.
On the 11-11 at 11:11, things can get rather carnivalesque at the Erwin Schrödinger-Centre in Adlershof when scientists and entrepreneurs meet at the Research Forum Adlershof for a short break and some traditional jelly-filled donuts. Other than that, the small gathering on the outskirts of Berlin doesn’t have much in common with the merry tomfoolery of carnival along the Rhine and Main river. It’s all about networking: “There is so much expertise gathered here in Adlershof, we decided to provide a platform for knowledge exchange,” says Petra Franz, assistant of the vice-president of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), who is responsible for Adlershof. Hosted by HU and IGAFA since 2013, the scientific network representing the ten non-university research institutions based in Berlin-Adlershof, the collaborative on-site conference offers workshops, lectures, and poster sessions on topics like solar energy, hybrid materials, and urban systems. Franz says: “We want to encourage people to think outside the box and take a look at what others are doing.” Ideally, this leads to cooperation on new projects.
Last November, one topic keeping policy and business busy attracted more than 80 guests: in an age of high-performance computers, how do we deal with masses of data produced by everything from wireless communication to physical measurements, genome analyses, or the recording of traffic streams?
“Some companies are collecting data without knowing what do with them,” says Johann-Christoph Freytag. In a short presentation, the HU professor for computer science and expert on database systems offered some insight on the challenges: datasets from different sources have to be made comparable, analysed, and stored. Small companies have problems affording the kind of experts this requires. Nowadays, fast computers are affordable as are services like data warehousing and clouds. In many cases, however, what’s lacking is the necessary know-how. Freytag concludes: “The problem is not the hardware. The problem is software and usability.”
Freytag hopes his graduate students will contribute to filling in these knowledge gap. “Increasingly there will be companies that offer data analyses for specific purposes.” The computer scientist hopes for closer contacts with companies in Adlershof: collaborative work on the questions arising from the flood of data – so he hopes – will benefit application and research equally. He has successfully cooperated with, for example, the Adlershof-based company ICE Gateway. Their aim is to convert public road lighting into data nodes that produce information on things like vacant parking spots or the density of traffic. Big Data is producing much added value for businesses.
However, Freytag doesn’t want to see privacy protection being neglected. “Big Data actually provides us with a lot of ways to gather information on individuals,” he says. For years he has been offering his students lectures on the subject. “I believe that these young people have to learn to exercise certain sensitivity for this issue.”
By Claudia Wessling for Adlershof Special
www.igafa.de/veranstaltungen/adlershofer-forschungsforum-2/
www.dbis.informatik.hu-berlin.de