Big Data and Environmental Sustainability: A Conversation Starter

Big data, referring broadly to, “the ability of society to harness information in novel ways to produce useful insights or goods and services of significant value” (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013, 9), has been heralded as, “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity” (McKinsey Global Institute, 2011, 1). Despite these claims, a review of literature that highlights big data’s revolutionising effects across sectors and industries revealed that environmental sustainability is largely not yet part of the popular lexicon of big data in action. This study addresses this gap. By interviewing 14 organisations across sectors, I examine how big data is perceived, employed, hindered, and enabled. I conclude that while big data adoption has broadly been slow to coalesce with sustainability efforts, emerging factors such as collaborative partnerships and business model innovation are positioning big data to become an integral element of environmental sustainability and vice versa.

Spotlight

Globant

We are a digitally native company where innovation, design and engineering meet scale. We use the latest technologies in the digital and cognitive field to empower organizations in every aspect. - Globant has more than 8,300 professionals and we are present in 14 countries working for companies like Google, Linkedin, BBVA, EA and Coca Cola among others. - We were named a Worldwide Leader of Digital Strategy Consulting Services by IDC MarketScape report (2016 and 2017)

OTHER WHITEPAPERS
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Do No Harm Guide Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization

whitePaper | December 29, 2022

Every day we are inundated with tables, graphs, charts, and maps explaining everything, including the unemployment rate, COVID-19 vaccination rates, baseball home run launch velocities, and our investment portfolios. When made well, data visualizations can help readers and users find insights and make discoveries. When made poorly, they obfuscate, mislead, or make it difficult for people to use them effectively.

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Why Graph is Key to The Modern Master Data Management Movement

whitePaper | August 1, 2022

The Graph database is fundamental to driving a much-needed breakthrough in the world of Master Data Management (MDM). Until now, traditional MDM systems have imposed strict rules and structures on how these projects are managed. This has cost enterprises dearly in terms of wasted time and resources and has been a major contributory factor to the failure of many MDM initiatives. Graph has changed all of that, allowing modern MDM platforms to completely redefine how master data is prepared for insight and used to deliver tangible business outcomes.

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Tackling climate change with data science and AI

whitePaper | April 2, 2023

In this white paper, we share how The Alan Turing Institute’s AI for science and government (ASG) programme has been using collaborative and multidisciplinary data science and AI to help tackle climate change.

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The Value of Oracle Enterprise Manager for Managing Oracle Databases

whitePaper | February 7, 2020

Multiple studies have proven that, while the business demand for databases grows, operational teams are constrained by traditional, reactive processes. Combined with budgetary pressures, this causes them to fall short in meeting the demand in a timely fashion. In addition, as companies adopt cloud paradigms, operational teams must manage across on-premises and cloud environments with the same resources. To be effective, companies need to shift from a reactive posture to one of standardization and proactive analysis and planning by leveraging intuitive tooling to automate manually intensive and non-value adding activities and to deliver real-time insights.

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Data Analytics Techniques for Internal Audit

whitePaper | April 27, 2023

Data analytics are used to test controls and validate that business risks are managed. This would generally occur at a point-in-time when an assurance activity is scheduled. Rather than test a number of transactions, the entire population of transactions can be reviewed for greater coverage. Data analytics includes automated tools such as generalised audit software, test data generators, computerised audit programs, specialised audit utilities and computer-assisted audit techniques (CAATs).

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Big Data and AI for The Financial Sector: Challenges and Opportunities

whitePaper | September 1, 2022

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a recently discovered field. Since the beginning of the computer science discipline, in the late 1950s, AI has drawn a lot of attention in the international scientific community and since then it has represented a field of study which has triggered diverse and numerous research activities.

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Spotlight

Globant

We are a digitally native company where innovation, design and engineering meet scale. We use the latest technologies in the digital and cognitive field to empower organizations in every aspect. - Globant has more than 8,300 professionals and we are present in 14 countries working for companies like Google, Linkedin, BBVA, EA and Coca Cola among others. - We were named a Worldwide Leader of Digital Strategy Consulting Services by IDC MarketScape report (2016 and 2017)

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