The platform launches the Big Data Forum

Discussions about big data start from the realization that increasingly people, objects and actions constantly send digital signals and leave digital traces. Internet traffic, smart phones, GPS devices, satellites and billions of sensors produce massive amounts of data that can be used to understand, measure and affect human actions in new ways. ‘Big data’ is the widely used term for the rapidly growing amounts and uses of such digital traces, and we currently see a widespread excitement about the potential of Big Data for business, academia, government, health care, urban governance and development efforts.

The Big Data Forum at CBS has been set up to address fundamental questions raised by this phenomenon, such as the kinds of knowledge we produce out of digital traces, the forms of governance that big data may lead to and the political and regulatory challenges involved. The forum brings together experts, researchers and others from public and private organizations with a keen interest in strategic, scholarly, political, and regulatory aspects of big data. The Forum arranges workshops and seminars, compiles news stories and the latest research on big data, and provides a platform for discussions about strategic, regulatory and educational aspects of big data, and the challenges involved in working with data in business, public service and global governance.

Mikkel Flyverbom, Associate Professor at the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management at CBS and cluster facilitator at the PP cluster Internet, Business and Society, is the founder of the new big-data-forum.org.

I have identified a need for a forum to discuss the possibilities and challenges of Big Data across different sectors, interests and concerns, and to address how Big Data affects the way in which we create knowledge and do governance, says Mikkel Flyverbom about the forum. Once the current hype about big data calms down, we will still need to address fundamental questions about the forms of knowledge production, governance and policies involved, and my hope is that the Big Data Forum can help address and inform these discussions moving forward.

The Big Data Forum seeks to integrate research efforts, strategy development and policy discussions in the area of big data. For instance, members of the Big Data Forum are doing research on multiple aspects of big data, have been asked to advice the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on questions related to research, development and innovation, and contributed to a number of recent articles on big data in Danish newspapers.

Visit the forum here.

Please contact Mikkel Flyverbom, Associate Professor, mfl.ikl@cbs.dk for more information about big-data-forum.org.

The project is affiliated with the CBS Public-Private Platform of which the aim is to connect private and public actors with a view to envisage possibilities in collaborations and examine challenges relevant to both parties