[Air-L] Interoperability issues in "Big Data"?

[Nathaniel Poor]

Hey Matthias-

This is not exactly what you are looking for, but there was a decent writeup of a case study from a new big data book in Slate:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/03/big_data_excerpt_how_mike_flowers_revolutionized_new_york_s_building_inspections.html

I don't really think it's about big data, I think it is more about disparate data sources and the failure of interoperability (until people in the case study came along, that is, but it's also about understanding your data), which is what you are asking about. I wouldn't think the book is very technical about it, and although there are technical issues there are probably also human-side issues, such as I am sure the different departments don't have the time to hang out with each other, share info, and when they built their own databases they were probably all offshoots of the pre-computer paper-based (or whatever) data methods each department already had.

I guess I am saying you are not actually asking about database interoperability, which is really just a basic computing issue and not really that hard in theory. What you are asking about is a slew of human, social, political, funding, etc., issues. It's socio-technical systems (STS).

-Nat.

On Mar 7, 2013, at 8:36 AM, Matthias Leese wrote:

> Dear list,
> 
> I am a political scientist involved in security studies. Recently, I have become increasingly interested in the application of algorithmic data mining in security operations. Although, from conversations with practicioners, I get the feeling that the promise of Big Data as a powerful tool for security governance might be rather a desire than something that is actually happening.
> 
> Public authorities seem to experience a number of problems in terms of data sharing, thus thwarting the creation of security-related Big Data warehouses in the first place. Since my disciplinary background does not exactly enable me to assess these issues, my question would be: could anyone provide some hints at good literature that deals with interoperability problems of databases (in a way that someone from outside the IT community can follow)?
> 
> Best wishes and thanks in advance,
> Matthias
> 
> -- 
> Matthias Leese
> Research Associate
> International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW)
> Section Security Ethics
> University of Tuebingen
> matthias.leese at izew.uni-tuebingen.de
> 
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-------------------------------
Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
http://natpoor.blogspot.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/