Big Data as the next promising horizon of technology is penetrating in all walks of life. Several industries and enterprise niches are now actively using Big Data analytics to drive business growth and competitive lead. So-called business analytics that marketers and decision makers used to bank upon now became more rigorous and potent with diverse sources of data. For customers and users, Big Data is continuing to deliver values and make life easier, richer and faster. The way Big data is transforming our life, occupation, education, health, entertainment and almost every sphere of life seems crazy. Let us have a look at the 5 weird, crazy and unforeseen ways Big Data is adding value to life.
1. Offering fashion designers insights on upcoming trends
Fashion is one of the most volatile industries when it comes to evolving trends. Any hot fashion trend can just be dropped as useless and backdated just in few days. Fashion designers often remain at their tiptoe to grab a new trend that matters to their business. The question is how they can actually know the next hot thing on its way to bursting into the scene? How such near-impossible prediction can actually take place?
Well, in recent times Big Data analytics really promised to insights on upcoming fashion. The volumes of data on evolving customer preference, insights into behavioral psychology, historical data on diverse fashion trends of the past, the popular styling habits, influential factors on fashion trends, all these together make the raw material for rigorous analytics to work upon and come with possible upcoming trends. Bigger the locus and diversified the data covered by analytics tools, more accuracy of predicting the trends can be ensured.
2. Revolutionary possibilities in healthcare
If you want to name one industry that can deliver biggest value to human life with the use of Big Data analytics then it is none other than healthcare. Just think about the possibilities when a physician can gain insights from millions of case histories in regard to a particular symptom and responsiveness to the treatment. Well, such insights delivered through analysis of millions of patient data and case histories will only uplift the accuracy level in diagnosis and treatment.
Let us share one surprising statistics. Emergency room trips for pregnant women and caesarean cases cost few millions healthcare dollars while according to experts, most such cases actually do not need emergency care. By applying Big Data analytics in recent times US healthcare system reduced the emergency room visits to a minimum 10% saving millions of dollars. Do you want to know how Big Data could help achieving this feat? Through the analysis of health insurance data healthcare experts and insurance companies hit upon the insights that a vast majority of emergency cases can be comprehensively dealt by urgent care centers. This resulted in creating awareness among employees to go for urgent care facilities.
3. Logistics and parcel service saving fuel
In U.S. a vast majority of transporters and logistics solutions providers have already adopted GPS or similar vehicle tracking technologies to ensure efficiency in delivery. Well, the data received through these location sensors and other sensors attached to the vehicles is allowing robust analysis of traffic condition, calculation of transport time against fuel level and delivery schedule. This analytic resulted in not only driving more efficiency in the delivery system but also huge savings on fuel cost.
United Parcel Service has already started using Big Data to know the fastest delivery routes in real time and thereby make good savings on fuel consumption. The parcel delivery vans of the company are now equipped with sensors capable of measuring the speed of the vehicle, location, traffic condition etc. The respective vehicle data collected by the sensors are sent to a central hub. At the central hub, the Big Data analytics professionals by analyzing this real-time sensor data prescribe the routes that can save time and fuel cost.
4. Predicting terrorist and cyber attacks
Security has become the most critical consideration in our time because of increasing threats from both terrorist attacks and cyber threats. For years, predicting these stealthy and unconventional dangers remained a big challenge for security forces across the world. The dreariest thing about them is that you have little knowledge about them and most of the time these attacks surprise us all of a sudden without least security preparation. How can these terrible vulnerabilities be addressed with Big Data analytics? Well, some latest developments can really allow us to stay hopeful.
First of all with the advancement of device-level user recognition technology and sensors it became easier now to track all identities and driving analysis to pinpoint to any threatening activities in real time. Moreover, the robust behavioral data analytics of web users continues to furnish insights on potential cyber threats. Secondly, geopolitical analysis coupled up with demographic data, data on arms movement, local factors motivating anti-establishment sentiments, all these data together now being put into analytics by security agencies to predict any brewing act of insurgency.
5. Preventing illegal trafficking
The news reports of human and drug trafficking became so common most of us just do not bother to have a look at them. Well, but human trafficking alone spoils countless valuable life every year and drug trafficking besides causing social unrest, moral degradation of youth costs millions to many countries. Together, illegal trafficking of human resource and drugs cost several hundred million. Do you have any clue how Big Data can help preventing this? Well, a few latest initiatives from security agencies confirm this.
Security agencies are now conducting a rigorous analysis of population and demographic data, several contributing factors leading to human trafficking, poverty alleviation schemes, drug addiction case studies, studies and reports on sexual abuse to gain insights on most vulnerable situations for such acts. Big Data analytics helping security agencies and policy makers to keep a tap on all kinds of illegal trafficking data and gain actionable insights.