# Big Data

**Authors:** Andreas L Opdahl, Vimala Nunavath  
**arXiv:** [2012.09109](https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.09109)  
**Date:** 2020-12-15  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/arxiv-id/2012.09109v1/

## Key points

- Increasing generation of large and open data sets from sources such as the Internet of Things, crowdsourcing, social media, and public authorities
- Big data offers numerous benefits for emergency management but also presents new challenges
- Review of sources and characteristics of big data
- Potential advantages of utilizing big data in emergency management
- Technological and societal challenges associated with big data in emergency management
- Central technologies for storing and processing big data, including a detailed examination of the Spark big-data engine
- Ethical and societal threats posed by big data
- Explanation of big data as an abundance of information available on the internet that surpasses human processing capabilities
- Various meanings of "big data" across technical infrastructure, computing, data, and usage levels
- Technical definition: collections of data too large to be handled conventionally with mainstream methods

## Summary

The chapter titled "Big Data" discusses the increasing generation of large and open data sets from sources such as the Internet of Things, crowdsourcing, social media, and public authorities. While big data offers numerous benefits for emergency management, it also presents new challenges. The chapter begins by reviewing the sources of big data and their characteristics. It then explores the potential advantages of utilizing big data in emergency management, along with the technological and societal challenges that arise. The authors delve into central technologies for storing and processing big data before providing a more detailed examination of the Spark big-data engine. Additionally, ethical and societal threats posed by big data are discussed. The concept of big data is explained as an abundance of information available on the internet that surpasses human processing capabilities. To effectively process these vast datasets using machines while ensuring that results are easily interpretable for humans is emphasized in this chapter. The term "big data" encompasses various meanings across technical infrastructure, computing, data, and usage levels. On a technical level, it refers to collections of data that are too large to be handled conventionally with mainstream data-processing methods. Overall, this chapter provides insights into the sources, benefits, challenges, technologies and ethical considerations associated with utilizing big data in emergency management.