Every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data - 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.
This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and mobile phone GPS signals to name a few. Such data has been described as the “oil” of the 21st Century digital economy.
In this context Data Analytics is an important economic driver both nationally and internationally encompassing the processes of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modelling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making.
Data Analytics has evolved over the years from Descriptive (what has happened) to Diagnostic (why did it happen) to Predictive (what could happen) to Prescriptive (what action could be taken). The next big paradigm shift will be towards Cognitive Analytics which will exploit the massive advances in High Performance Computing by combining advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques with data analytics approaches.
Harnessing the Power of Cognitive Analytics
Cognitive Analytics applies human-like intelligence to certain tasks, and brings together a number of intelligent technologies, including semantics, artificial intelligence algorithms, deep learning and machine learning. Applying such techniques, a cognitive application can get smarter and more effective over time by learning from its interactions with data and with humans.
Creating Competitive Advantage
A cognitive system can create competitive advantage to business, providing real-time answers with the ability to search through massive amounts of information and making sense of context, and computing the most likely answer. The benefits are considerable, opening up opportunities to mine untapped data sources; provide highly personalised services; improve service consistency and quality; and enhance and amplify knowledge sharing.
Ulster University is uniquely placed to grasp this opportunity as it is one of only a very small number of Universities in the world that has a 15-year track record of research excellence into neuro-inspired cognitive analytics through the £20m Intelligent Systems Research Centre.