Big Data includes extremely large data sets that are computationally analyzed to reveal associations, trends, and patterns mostly relating to human interactions and behavior. The growing number of online and digital activities leave a trail of information consisting of daily actions like cloud storage, cookies, transactions, and more…Each action providing a more concise picture of personal choices. This growing trail of data is known as data exhaust.
Analyzing and gathering this data has become increasingly easy over the years and this allowed big data volumes to explode. According to the U.N, the world’s data volume is growing at 40% annually and 90% of the current data has been created within the last 2 years. In connection to this, big data is employed in various aspects such as business to show where the element in question can focus its efforts (Jeble et al. 2018). The advances made in connectivity, computing power, and data gathering implicate that humanity is provided with more info than ever before. This info is also more accessible than ever through the evolution of personal digital devices, credit cards, and social media. Big data impacts almost every aspect surrounding human beings. Various compelling ways make analytics of big data to be effectively applicable when it comes to solving real-world problems.
Big data helps businesses in understanding and acting on the operations of environmental impacts. Some of the operations are outside direct control, while others are within their boundaries. Some of the business operations much helped by big data include product disposal, employee travels, and raw material sourcing, just mentioning a few (Dubey et al. 2019). Big data also helps in assessing environmental risks. Indeed, it helps make critical tools such as Aqueduct employed by the World Resources Institute as an interactive water-risk mapping tool of calculating and monitoring water risk anywhere across the globe using different parameters such as water quality, quantity, and other regulatory issues in a specific area (Raut et al. 2019). More importantly, big data also helps environmental sustainability by understanding the demand for food and energy as the world population increases while climate change is reducing the resources as time goes by (Wanner & Janiesch, 2019). Other impacts of big data on sustainability are optimizing resource usage and better regulation when used in government policies.
Indeed, environmental sustainability is amongst the several promises of big data as among the most vital aspects affecting humanity's existence to be easily implemented and maintained. The emphasis placed by the U.N on big data’s role to reach more efficient decisions in terms of sustainability reflects on the importance it has on our daily lives and vice versa. Big data plays a critical role in providing crucial data on climate change, which is at the top of the list of the significant global risks that disrupt economies and all countries across the globe. Big data is known to generate useful insights, which are critical for fostering environmental sustainability amongst other critical sectors such as healthcare. Big data should be effectively designed and used so that it helps to reach more concrete sustainable goals.
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