Bulletin

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/bulletin/1104/thumbnail.jp

Big data-driven fuzzy cognitive map for prioritising IT service procurement in the public sector

YesThe prevalence of big data is starting to spread across the public and private sectors however, an impediment to its widespread adoption orientates around a lack of appropriate big data analytics (BDA) and resulting skills to exploit the full potential of big data availability. In this paper, we propose a novel BDA to contribute towards this void, using a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) approach that will enhance decision-making thus prioritising IT service procurement in the public sector. This is achieved through the development of decision models that capture the strengths of both data analytics and the established intuitive qualitative approach. By taking advantages of both data analytics and FCM, the proposed approach captures the strength of data-driven decision-making and intuitive model-driven decision modelling. This approach is then validated through a decision-making case regarding IT service procurement in public sector, which is the fundamental step of IT infrastructure supply for publics in a regional government in the Russia federation. The analysis result for the given decision-making problem is then evaluated by decision makers and e-government expertise to confirm the applicability of the proposed BDA. In doing so, demonstrating the value of this approach in contributing towards robust public decision-making regarding IT service procurement.EU FP7 project Policy Compass (Project No. 612133

Custom Hardware Versus Cloud Computing in Big Data

The computational and data handling challenges in big data are immense yet a market is steadily growing traditionally supported by technologies such as Hadoop for management and processing of huge and unstructured datasets. With this ever increasing deluge of data we now need the algorithms, tools and computing infrastructure to handle the extremely computationally intense data analytics, looking for patterns and information pertinent to creating a market edge for a range of applications. Cloud computing has provided opportunities for scalable high-performance solutions without the initial outlay of developing and creating the core infrastructure. One vendor in particular, Amazon Web Services, has been leading this field. However, other solutions exist to take on the computational load of big data analytics. This chapter provides an overview of the extent of applications in which big data analytics is used. Then an overview is given of some of the high-performance computing options that are available, ranging from multiple Central Processing Unit (CPU) setups, Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and cloud solutions. The chapter concludes by looking at some of the state of the art solutions for deep learning platforms in which custom hardware such as FPGAs and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are used within a cloud platform for key computational bottlenecks

Sensor networks and personal health data management: software engineering challenges

The advances of 5G, sensors, and information technologies enabled proliferation of smart pervasive sensor networks. 5G mobile networks provide low-power, high-availability, high density, and high-throughput data capturing by sensor networks and continuous streaming of multiple measured variables. Rapid progress in sensors that can measure vital signs, advances in the management of medical knowledge, and improvement of algorithms for decision support, are fueling a technological disruption to health monitoring. The increase in size and complexity of wireless sensor networks and expansion into multiple areas of health monitoring creates challenges for system design and software engineering practices. In this paper, we highlight some of the key software engineering and data-processing issues, along with addressing emerging ethical issues of data management. The challenges associated with ensuring high dependability of sensor network systems can be addressed by metamorphic testing. The proposed conceptual solution combines data streaming, filtering, cross-calibration, use of medical knowledge for system operation and data interpretation, and IoT-based calibration using certified linked diagnostic devices. Integration of blockchain technologies and artificial intelligence offers a solution to the increasing needs for higher accuracy of measurements of vital signs, high-quality decision-making, and dependability, including key medical and ethical requirements of safety and security of the data

Big data: From beginning to future

Big data is a potential research area receiving considerable attention from academia and IT communities. In the digital world, the amounts of data generated and stored have expanded within a short period of time. Consequently, this fast growing rate of data has created many challenges. In this paper, we use structuralism and functionalism paradigms to analyze the origins of big data applications and its current trends. This paper presents a comprehensive discussion on state-of-the-art big data technologies based on batch and stream data processing. Moreover, strengths and weaknesses of these technologies are analyzed. This study also discusses big data analytics techniques, processing methods, some reported case studies from different vendors, several open research challenges, and the opportunities brought about by big data. The similarities and differences of these techniques and technologies based on important parameters are also investigated. Emerging technologies are recommended as a solution for big data problems

The role of big data analytics in Internet of Things

The explosive growth in the number of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and the exponential increase in data consumption only reflect how the growth of big data perfectly overlaps with that of IoT. The management of big data in a continuously expanding network gives rise to non-trivial concerns regarding data collection efficiency, data processing, analytics, and security. To address these concerns, researchers have examined the challenges associated with the successful deployment of IoT. Despite the large number of studies on big data, analytics, and IoT, the convergence of these areas creates several opportunities for flourishing big data and analytics for IoT systems. In this paper, we explore the recent advances in big data analytics for IoT systems as well as the key requirements for managing big data and for enabling analytics in an IoT environment. We taxonomized the literature based on important parameters. We identify the opportunities resulting from the convergence of big data, analytics, and IoT as well as discuss the role of big data analytics in IoT applications. Finally, several open challenges are presented as future research directions

Profit maximization and time minimization admission control and resource scheduling for cloud-based big data analytics-as-a-service platforms

Big data analytics typically requires large amounts of resources to process ever-increasing data volumes. This can be time consuming and result in considerable expenses. Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) platforms provide a way to tackle expensive resource costs and lengthy data processing times by leveraging automatic resource management with a pay-per-use service delivery model. This paper explores optimization of resource management algorithms for AaaS platforms to automatically and elastically provision cloud resources to execute queries with Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees. We present admission control and cloud resource scheduling algorithms that serve multiple objectives including profit maximization for AaaS platform providers and query time minimization for users. Moreover, to enable queries that require timely responses and/or have constrained budgets, we apply data sampling-based admission control and resource scheduling where accuracy can be traded-off for reduced costs and quicker responses when necessary. We conduct extensive experimental evaluations for the algorithm performances compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. Experiment results show that our proposed algorithms perform significantly better in increasing query admission rates, consuming less resources and hence reducing costs, and ultimately provide a more flexible resource management solution for fast, cost-effective, and reliable big data processing