HOW BIG DATA ANALYTICS ENSURES SOCIAL INCLUSION
Meta tags: Big Data, Analytics, Sustainability, Corporate Strategies.
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Updated November 2026. This was first published on 11 February 2022. The idea is the same. Any number below is what the original piece said then. It is not a new count.
Key takeaways
- Meta tags: Big Data, Analytics, Sustainability, Corporate Strategies.
- With increased competitiveness and concerns about sustainability, big data provides the most effective corporate strategies for promoting sustainable development and profit maximization.
- The amount of data on the planet is increasing exponentially.
Meta tags: Big Data, Analytics, Sustainability, Corporate Strategies.
With increased competitiveness and concerns about sustainability, big data provides the most effective corporate strategies for promoting sustainable development and profit maximization.
The amount of data on the planet is increasing exponentially. By 2020, 64.2 zettabytes of data will have been generated, an increase of 314% over 2015. Increased demand for information as a result of the COVID-19 pandemics contributes to the higher-than-expected rise. The term “data exhaust” refers to passively obtained data derived from everyday interactions with digital devices or services such as mobile phones, credit cards, and social media. The phrase “big data” refers to this onslaught of digital data. Data is increasing as a result of the quick collection of data by inexpensive and many information sensors mobile devices, and the fact that the world’s capacity for storing data has about tripled every 40 months since the 1980s.
The use of big data is widespread across a range of industries, including hospitality, transportation, healthcare, government, and e-commerce. Consumer profiling, personalized pricing, marketing, advertising, and predictive analysis are just a few of the many uses of big data. One of the most perplexing issues confronting businesses today is balancing the conflicting objectives of profit maximization and long-term survival.
Data is critical to decision-making and is the most fundamental component of accountability. Consumer profiling, individualized services, and predictive analysis are already routine in the private sector, with big data analytics being used in marketing, advertising, and management. Similar technology might be used to collect real-time data on people’s well-being and to provide humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable. When new data sources, such as satellite data, new technology, and new analytical tools are used responsibly, they may allow more flexible, efficient, and evidence-based decision-making, as well as more inclusive and equitable monitoring of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
To fully use the promise of big data, fundamental human rights must be safeguarded: privacy, ethics, and data sovereignty all require balancing individual rights against community benefits. Much of the new data is passively collected ? via people’ “digital footprints” and sensor-enabled devices ? Because big data is the consequence of people’ unique behavioral patterns, deleting individually identifiable information may not be sufficient to maintain privacy. People or groups of people may be re-identified as a result of integrating several datasets, thus exposing them to harm. Appropriate data protection policies must be adopted to avoid data misuse or mismanagement.
Also, there is the danger of increasing inequality and discrimination. The distance between those who have and those who do not have data is already expanding. Without action, a new frontier of inequality will separate those who know from those who do not. Language barriers, poverty, a lack of education, a lack of technical infrastructure, remoteness, or prejudice and discrimination all prevent many people from accessing the new world of data and information. Numerous efforts are necessary, including building the capability of all nations, particularly the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and small island developing states (SIDS).
Public Private Partnership #
To ensure widespread access to insights from big data across multiple industries, Global Pulse has been collaborating with the private sector to operationalize the concept of ‘data philanthropy,’ which allows for the safe and responsible use of businesses’ data for sustainable development and humanitarian action. For instance, in 2016, Global Pulse partnered with the social media platform Twitter.
Every day, hundreds of millions of tweets are sent in dozens of languages. These social dialogs offer up-to-the-minute information on a variety of topics, including food prices, employment availability, access to health care, educational quality, and accounts of natural disasters. The agreement will enable UN development and humanitarian companies to transform publicly available data into meaningful information that can be used to assist communities worldwide.
Other collaborations include the GSMA’s “Big Data for Social Good” initiative. uses mobile operators’ big data what it can do to address humanitarian crises such as epidemics and natural disasters; Data for Climate Action, a competition that connected researchers from around the world with data and tools from leading companies to enable data-driven climate solutions; and Data Collaboratives, a new type of collaboration that goes beyond public-private partnerships.
The role of United Nations in Present Era #
The UN and other international and regional companies have a critical role in establishing principles and standards to guide collective action around the safe use of big data for development and humanitarian action within a global community and in accordance with established standards. These standards attempt to maximize the utility of data by increasing its openness and transparency, eliminate invasions of privacy and violations of human rights caused by data misuse on people and companies, and minimize inequalities in the creation, access to, and use of data. To achieve the SDGs in our digital age, we must recognize the importance of not just preventing data exploitation but also ensuring that when data can be used responsibly for the public benefit, it is.
The Secretary- General’s Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (IEAG) has provided specific suggestions on how to address these issues, including an UN-led initiative to mobilize the data revolution for sustainable development through the following.
Promoting and fostering innovation to solve data gaps.
Mobilizing resources to close the gap between industrialized and developing nations, as well as between data-poor and data-rich people.
Leadership and coordination are required to ensure that the data revolution plays a full role in achieving sustainable development.
The UN system is boosting its use of big data analytics, with an increasing number of UN agencies, funds, and programs adopting and deploying operational applications for development and humanitarian purposes.
Another piece of global level partnership in this regard is UN global Pulse.
UN GLOBAL PLUS #
Global Pulse is the UN Secretary-data General’s science-focused innovation project. Global Pulse raises awareness of the opportunities that big data presents for sustainable development, and humanitarian action develops high-impact analytics solutions for UN and government partners through its network of data science innovation centers, or Pulse Labs, in Indonesia (Jakarta), Uganda (Kampala), and at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and works to lower adoption and scaling barriers.
Global Pulse launched a data privacy program to securely and responsibly unleash the value of data. One component of the program is continuing research into privacy-protective applications of big data for humanitarian and development reasons. Global Pulse established a Data Privacy Advisory Group, comprising of privacy experts from the regulatory community, the business sector, and academia, to participate in discourse about crucial challenges surrounding big data and to advise the UN on the creation of privacy tools and standards. To assist practitioners in examining the proportionality of risks, harms, and usefulness in a data-driven initiative, Global Pulse produced a two-phase “Risk, Harms, and Benefits Assessment” tool with recommendations.
Global Pulse also assisted in organizing the UN Data Innovation Lab workshop series, a joint effort of UNICEF and the World Food Program. The series, which included five topic workshops, sought to better understand the UN system’s current data innovation what it can do and requirements.
Big Data Applications for Humanitarian and Corporate Development #
Critical data for global, regional, and national development policy remain scarce. This is why the United Nations created the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ in 2015. This initiative seeks to bring people together to address social, environmental, and economic challenges, with a particular emphasis on inclusive and participatory development that includes everyone. Numerous countries continue to lack adequate statistics on their whole population.
Businesses have recognized that addressing the effects of their interactions with the natural environment is the only way to achieve exceptional corporate sustainability. The complicated nature of the interaction between the natural and economic worlds suggests potential uses for big data analytics. Until the preceding decade, corporations were unaware of the full extent to which their actions had an environmental impact. They now have access to a variety of information, including a diverse range of data. they may use to boost performance efficiency and meet sustainability goals.
The private sector amasses a large amount of big data that has the greatest potential for the public good. As a result, public-private partnerships are expected to gain prominence in the next few years. The challenge will be to guarantee that they are long-term sustainable, with clear frameworks in place to define both parties’ responsibilities and expectations.
The application of big data analytics to assess progress toward sustainable development goals and detect potentially harmful environmental situations paves the way for a more people- or, more precisely, environment-centered approach to analysis and ecosystem mobilization. The era of big data is rapidly approaching. Also, one might assume that the private sector will develop and exploit the new big data eco-system in ways that benefit people, with a special emphasis on the most vulnerable members of society.
The social media promotion is a new analytical approach, vast data sets, and new technology all have the potential to contribute to the formulation of more agile and efficient environmental policies. This examines how big data is used to promote sustainability in several fields and looks into the many alternatives for using big data analytics to generate social and environmental benefits.
Questions and answers #
What is the main point? #
Meta tags: Big Data, Analytics, Sustainability, Corporate Strategies.
What else did the original piece say? #
With increased competitiveness and concerns about sustainability, big data provides the most effective corporate strategies for promoting sustainable development and profit maximization.