by Angela Guess
A new article reports, “By this time next week, the world will have 7 billion people in it, according to the United Nations, and by 2050, there are supposed to be 9 billion people in the world. This rapid population growth will fundamentally change the way populations use resources like energy, water and food, and corporations, governments and NGOs will increasingly turn to analytics, software and big data tools to manage how to deliver these resources to the populations that need them. Here are eight ways big data and analytics are already helping manage resources for a booming population.”
The first way is SAP’s population demographics (see image): “In time for the 7 billion mark next week, SAP and the United Nations Population Fund created interactive maps that show the demographics of both an aging and a youthful population of 7 billion people. It only takes 13 years to add another 1 billion more people to the planet, according to the report. You can check out world stats, like birth rates, deaths, percentage of population by age, as well as gender.”
Another way is a start-up called Space-Time Insight that “creates software that merges real-time geospatial data with Google Maps, and sells the software to utilities and gas and oil companies to manage their resources in real time. California’s Independent System Operator Corporation (Cal ISO) — which manages 85 percent of the state’s power load — has installed an 80-foot by 6.5-foot screen in its control room to display real-time power-grid data from thousands of endpoints. Cal ISO used to get the data in four-second intervals, but given the growth in resources, population and data feeds, it now gets updates by the millisecond.”
photo credit: Gigaom.com
