FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INDIANAPOLIS — The Polis Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is sponsoring a session on “Turning Big Data into Actionable Information,” the fifth presentation in its SmartEdge program, on Friday, Aug. 12.
The event will take place from 12:30 to 3 p.m. in the Ambassador Meeting Room at Sleep Inn & Suites and Conference Center, 1244 W. 16th St. It is open to the public.
The SmartEdge series “Smart Government, Smart Environment and Smart Communities” focuses on the role of science and technology in support of sustainability and quality of life. Presentations are designed to share solutions and technologies pertaining to smart cities and their linkage to sustainability and resilience, policy and governance, and the overall well-being of communities.
Mansour Raad, the lead subject-matter expert on big data at Esri, will briefly review tools that allow users to aggregate billions of records at spatial, temporal and attribute levels to analyze and visualize them in nontraditional ways.
Raad will also demonstrate GeoStatistics, an application used to turn big data into actionable information.
“Some say that big data is about volume, velocity, variety. I say it is more about when the traditional means are failing you,” Raad said.
According to Raad, most of big data comes attached with a specific location in the form of geographical coordinates or implicitly in the form of an internet address or a tweet.
With over 25 years of experience in the IT/GIS field, Raad often assists commercial and government customers in implementing big data geospatial solutions. He has performed as team lead in architecting and implementing product solutions for ArcGIS. Raad earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University and frequently blogs on big data topics and examples of geospatial implementations.
The Polis Center, part of the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, is one of the nation’s leading university-based units working with communities to enhance their preparedness for natural disasters. It specializes in providing place-based research tools to transform data into usable information for more effective local decision-making.