big data

The next 26th and 27th of November DATADRI is celebrated in Córdoba. It is a reference event for the digital transformation of agricultural sector. During two days, the challenges and opportunities of the sector will be addressed, paying special attention to the competitive advantages that new technologies and data analysis can bring.

Junta de Andalucía, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, among many other organizations and companies, collaborate with the event. You can see the entire list of sponsors and contributors here.

What is the purpose of the event?

The event responds to three objectives:

• Promote digital transformation in agri-food chain.
• Sensitize about success cases.
• Contribute to reduce barriers to digital transformation implementation, creating best practices standards and opportunities for collaboration.

What is the agenda?

DATAGRI is made up of two sessions, the Forum Day, which will be held on November 26, and the Farming Day, which will take place on the next day.

The Forum Day will be integrated by different key note and round tables, with the participation of farmers, technology companies, representatives of public administration and experts who will share their vision and experience, with special focus on new trends. Among other technologies, they will talk about robotics, Internet of Things or drones, and how its application can help boost a more sustainable and efficient agri-food sector. The session will end with a debate, entitled "Who has to lead the digital transformation in the sector?".

For its part, the Farming Day will be integrated by two workspaces. On the one hand, a working space called "Operative Groups as a driver for the digitization of the sector" followed by the "Digital Agenda workday for the agri-food sector and the rural environment" (invitation will be necessary to attend this session).

In parallel, attendees could enjoy a series of demonstrations and exhibitions, to discover first-hand how the latest technologies can boost their business and improve their competitiveness.

What do I have to do to attend?

Those interested in attending the event must pre-register at the following link.

GIS4tech is a Spanish Spin-Off company founded in 2016, as a result of the research activity of the Cluster Territorial group and the Department of Urban Planning of the University of Granada. GIS4tech is dedicated to technical assistance, advice, training, research and development supported by Geographic Information Systems and related technologies. The team has more than 20 years of experience in territory studies, elaboration of cartographies and Geographic Information Systems.

Smartvel builds b2b content marketing solutions for airlines, hotel chains, travel agencies and tourism entities. They collect, monitor, classify, index, geolocate and translate segmented content from different sources. Then, they integrate this content, easily and quickly, into their client websites, driving user experience

In short, they provide a content solution that lets tourist know what to do in a specific place, mixing the destination's living agenda (events, culture, sports, etc.) with the points of interest (monuments, restaurants, etc.) and the own layers that their customers want to show.

DataCentric is a data company. They build solutions focused on customers, technology and information. They learn from data to improve the performance of business processes and optimize investments in commercial and marketing actions, always sharing an analytical vision and the insights derived from the projects.

Their passion for data led them to build the DataCentric Data Lake. A complex information system based on Big Data techniques, connected to the Internet and the most relevant Data Sets, both public and private, relates to consumers, companies and territories. Thus, they develop solutions and vertical APIs to be able to make better decisions in real time.

Respect for privacy and legal compliance are part of its essential values. They guarantee the best custody and treatment of their client most valuable asset: the information about their customers and their business.

The European Data Incubator (EDI) is a project co-financed by the European Union that seeks to support sustainable business incubation around analytics and Big Data. The consortium is made up of managers from several acceleration initiatives within the FIWARE Accelerate program, incubators of companies such as Deusto Entrepreneurship Center and etventure Seed Lab, as well as the network of emerging companies F6S.

To locate the candidate companies for the program, EDI has launched a call where SMEs and entrepreneurs will have to solve different challenges using a series of proposed data sets. These challenges and data have been provided by several European partners such as Volkswagen Navarra, Agencia EFE, Jot Internet Media or RACC.

The process that must be carried out by companies that want to participate in this program is:

1. Pick up a challenge from the challenge catalogue. There are two options. The first one is to choose one of the challenges propesed by the different data providers. They have challenges from Smart Cities, Energy & Environment, Internet & Media, Industry 4.0 and Retail sectors. The second options is to participate in the cross-sector challenge, where the only requirement is that you mix data from different sectors from our catalogue.
2. Check the data catalogue. This catalogue provide free samples of the full datasets companieswill have access to if selected. Some examples of these datasets are: marketing online campaigns statistics, anonymised employee information or  transaction items.
3. Submit a solution proposal to the selected challenge. Deadline for submission is on 27th of June at 12:00 (noon) via F6S Platform.

The selected teams can get up to €100,000 equity-free funding. In addition, EDI will help European SMEs and start-ups with:

• An infrastructure of high computing and storage hosted in cloud, based on open technologies.
• Training in the most popular Big Data Analytics tools.
• Advice for the development of viable business ideas.
• A connection network with top Big Data startups from all over Europe participating in the program.

For more information, you can visit the call summary and the guidelines for applicants.

uDA (urban Data Analytics) is a digital company founded in 2013 and dedicated to the segmeted and geolocated knowledge of Real Estate. UDA join the worlds of the real estate sector with Big Data and Business Intelligence. The opacity of the real estate sector, the lack of structured and rigorous information, and the increase of making current economic decisions speed make the sector close to a disruptive change. uDA develops services with real estate agents for the implementation of actions based on the value and risk analysis, maximizing the profitability of their investments.

The amount of data we generate does not stop growing. 90% of the data created in the history of humanity were produced during the last year and a 40% annual growth is estimated for the next decade. These figures highlight the importance of data in today's economy and society. The data provide us with knowledge, which facilitate to make the right decisions at the right time.

To optimize the advantages that the use of data can bring to our day to day, an increasing number of organizations and companies are implementing new technologies that help to improve their management and obtain greater value. The report New trends and challenges in the data world analyzes some of these technological and social trends that are revolutionizing the world of data. These technologies are big data and artificial intelligence, decision algorithms, internet of things and blockchain.

The following are some of the main conclusions of the report:

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

• What is it? The analysis of large volumes of data, from different sources and with different formats, in real time, acquires a new dimension combined with artificial intelligence technologies, which apply reason guidelines to data.
• What are its advantages? Thanks to these technologies, companies and organizations can better understand the current and future functioning of their environment, and face the challenges at the right time. The combination of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data can boost economic growth, respond to citizens needs and optimize public services. In addition, it can contribute to the strengthening of democracy.
• What are its challenges? The lack of talent with the necessary skills, the limitation in current infrastructures and the privacy protection are the main challenges that organizations have to face when implementing a Big Data initiative.

The decision algorithms

• What is it? These are automated agents capable of extracting value from a large volume of data in an agile and efficient way, facilitating automatic decision making.
• What are its advantages? Decision algorithms allow more efficient, transparent and equitable decision making.
• What are its challenges? Among the challenges faced by people in charge of algorithms management is ensuring the quality and availability of data through controls and audits, as well as ensuring their integrity, ethics and independence.

Internet of Things

• What is it?  When we talk about Internet of Things (IoT) we refer to a network of connected objects, by wireless or cable, capable of generating data without human intervention.
• What are its advantages? IoT facilitates processes automation and provides new and multiple forms of interaction that contribute to improving universality and accessibility to services.
• What are its challenges? The main inhibitors of IoT are security and privacy, interoperability and the need for new infrastructures. It is also important to bear in mind that IoT can contribute to increasing the existing gap between different social classes according to their possibilities of data and services access.

Blockchain

• What is it? Blockchain is a distributed database that controls the transfer of digital information. That is, a kind of account book where the records are encrypted and interleaved, so change in one of the blocks affects the others.
• What are its advantages? Its main advantage is the security and privacy of information, the integrity, the sustainability, the transparency and the (quasi) anonymity. This will allow us to transform our political system and enable profound social changes.
• What are its challenges?
• The lack of qualified talent, the regulatory changes, the electronic security of citizens and the limits on institutions ability to adapt the new enviroment are the main challenges highlighted in the report.

Thanks to Big Data and artificial intelligence, decision algorithms, Internet of Things or Blockchain, organizations and companies can extract the necessary value from the data, which will help them to improve services and products for citizens. Although these four technologies are still in a phase of incipient adoption, they are expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, once the above-mentioned challenges are overcome - if you want to delve into these challenges you can read the report New trends and challenges in the world of data.

Next September Madrid will host the third edition of Chief Data Officer Day, an event focused on the latest developments and strategic and technological keys in an Open Data scenario, which this year plans to gather more than 300 experts in the management and exploitation of data.

In coming years, the key challenges of many companies will mean putting "data" at the centre of the business and becoming a Data Driven Company. Companies such as Endesa, Orange, Banca March, Travel Club, among others, will be present at this event to discuss new information systems, Data Management, Data Governance Technologies, and so on. According to Gartner, 15% of the current CDOs (Chief Digital Officers) will be promoted to Managing Director or CEO in the next 5 years. The future of companies inevitably involves generating value from the management and exploitation of the information they keep.

The meeting will be attended by more than 40 Data Driven Companies from the public sector (Ministry of Industry, DGT, Correos) and private (Blablacar, Mediaset, Rastreator, Cajamar, Endesa, Carrefour, Uniplaces, Cabify and Viajes el Corte Inglés among other leading companies).

The event also announces as a new element the latest trends and innovative success stories regarding Datalake, Anonimization, Machine Learning, Data Visualization and Data Governance, among others. One of the issues to be addressed will be how to transition from the classic Dataware House model to the Datalake, as well as how to implement a Data Governance strategy. Also to be addressed will be Data Management to achieve reliability, traceability and data control and analytics to extract insights of value to streamline decision making through technology.

The event will take place next September 26 at the Novotel Madrid Center Hotel. Más información. 

On Friday, April 21, a workshop dedicated to data science in the social and health sector will take place in Media-Lab Prado, Madrid. A meeting designed for professionals and researchers specialized in the data analysis for social purposes and belonging to the health science.

The event will start with a specific session on the analysis of urban mobility through big data, followed by two talks related to the healthcare sector under the titles "Big4Cast: prediction of crisis in bipolar disorder" and "machine learning in EGG predictive analysis ".

As a clousure of the day, the attendees will be able to learn about the work of other experts in the field through the poster exhibition that will take place during the workshop. Those professionals who have sent their pieces of work to vlopezlo@ucm.es will obtain the corresponding certificate. Afterwards, a round table will be held where five representatives of public and private entities will discuss on the following topics:

• Social development with maps (ESRI España).

• Healthcare research (Fujitsu).

• Madrid Salud (WAP).

• Innovation in the cloud (AWS).

• Open Data (City of Madrid).

To attend at the workshop, participants need to register before through the Eventbrite webpage. 

Synergic Partners, Telefónica Group company specialized in big data, data science and engineering, organizes together with Telefónica the Data Science Awards Spain 2016 to reward the best individual and business initiatives in the field of data journalism and big data.

The awards has been divided into three different categories: the best business big data initiative, which awards the national company which is more innovative and presents the best balance of technology and value created through data; the best Data Scientist in three areas (data scientist, data engineer and data visualization); and finally, the best data journalism article where the clarity of presentation and the data visualization will be valued. 

The deadline for proposals is different for each of the awards. In the case of the best business initiative, any entity can participate regardless of its industry until 31st July, the same day for the best data journalism article. Applicants in this category must submit a work based on data research, together with an explanatory dossier on the methodology and impact of the piece of work.

Unlike the two previous awards, the registration deadline for the best data scientist runs until 30th June. Before that date, participants will have to overcome a challenge being selected the best fifty participants who will make a new test in July. The final winners will be chosen among those candidates that have passed the last challenge.

The jury of Data Science Awards Spain 2016 will be formed by science data and big data professionals from business and academic field; a large group of experts from Synergic Partners, Silicon Valley, Telefonica, Columbia University and the Carlos III University, among others.

The jury will be divided into two categories -a technical jury and a business/journalism jury- to evaluate each of the applications according to different criteria: methodologies, innovation and technology to the technical field and originality, accuracy or impact on business/journalistic area.

In early September the names of the winners will be published and the award ceremony will take place where the different stakeholders of science data and big data will gather.