Big data is an evolving term that describes any voluminous amount of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for information. Although big data doesn’t refer to any specific quantity, the term is often used when speaking about petabytes and exabytes of data.
Big Data has been viewed as the future natural oil that Governments should invest in and therefore very important to economic growth. Currently in Kenya, big data is not only being used for commercial gain but is being used to solve societal problems. In regards, to this IBM has partnered with the County Government of Nairobi to help improve public sector.
IBM is currently managing the Nairobi City Council garbage fleet through installation of sensors that also help produce a wealth quality of data about road quality. Equipping around 10 garbage fleets, the sensors will help in collection of data as well as help in analysing data and making real time decisions to solve some of the problems.
Here is a clip from CNN showing how Big data is slowly becoming a big deal in our day to operations especially in Nairobi Kenya:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRAIR4q3MwA
