Director of UN Global Pulse (www.unglobalpulse.org) presents a vision for utilizing big data and analytics to better understand human well-being at the O'Reilly Strata Conference in New York (September 25, 2012).
What can Big Data analysis tell us about human well-being? About how people cope with unemployment, rising food prices, or about people's perceptions of HIV and other deadly diseases? A lot.
The United Nations' Global Pulse initiative (www.unglobalpulse.org) was established on the premise that Big Data didn't just hold the answers to what products and services people prefer to consume. Big Data, we believe, also held information about how people were coping with global stresses like unemployment and natural disasters; and whether development programs were having the desired effect.
