Abstract

Abstract: With the explosion of social media sites and proliferation of digital computing devices and Internet access, massive amounts of public data is being generated on a daily basis. Efficient techniques/ algorithms to analyze this massive amount of data can provide near real-time information about emerging trends and provide early warning in case of an imminent emergency (such as the outbreak of a viral disease). In addition, careful mining of these data can reveal many useful indicators of socioeconomic and political events, which can help in establishing effective public policies. The emerging ability to use big data techniques for development (BD4D) promises to revolutionalize healthcare, education, and agriculture; facilitate the alleviation of poverty; and help to deal with humanitarian crises and violent conflicts. The focus of this talk will be on reviewing the application of big data analytics for the purpose of human development. Besides all the benefits, the large-scale deployment of BD4D is beset with several challenges due to the massive size, fast-changing and diverse nature of big data. The most pressing concerns relate to efficient data acquisition and sharing, establishing of context (e.g., geolocation and time) and veracity of a dataset, and ensuring appropriate privacy. We will review existing BD4D work and will also highlight important challenges and open issues.

BIO : JUNAID QADIR is an Associate Professor at the Information Technology University—Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. Previously, he has served as an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), from 2008 to 2015. His primary research interests are in the areas of computer systems and networking and using ICT for development (ICT4D). His research is multidisciplinary and spans the diverse areas of algorithms, artificial intelligence, formal-methods, data mining, big data, cognitive radio networks, cloud computing, software defined networking, internet-of-things, pedagogy and learning, and using ICT for development (ICT4D). He has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in top quality journals and magazines—including publications in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (CST), IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication (JSAC), IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), and IEEE Communication Magazine. He is an award-winning teacher who has been awarded the highest national teaching award in Pakistan—the higher education commission’s (HEC) best university teacher award—for the year 2012-2013. He is actively involved in the technical community and professional service. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Access, Springer/BioMed Central’s Big Data Analytics journal, and the IEEE Communications Magazine. He is a member of ACM , and a senior member of IEEE .