Centers & Institutes

Data to Insight Center

Affiliated Faculty
  • Beth Plale
  • Polly Baker
  • Robert McDonald
  • Matthew Link
  • Eric Wernert
Website

The mission of the Data to Insight Center (part of the Pervasive Technology Institute) is to create tools and guidelines that allow scientists and companies to harness the vast stores of digital data now being produced, and to turn these data into insight that effectively guides human decisions and advances human knowledge. This includes:

  • Creation of tools and guidelines for archiving large-scale and complex data and information. Data being collected today may be valuable for decades or centuries in the future—in some cases, data will be of value in perpetuity. The Data to Insight Center will create tools for storing data in ways that are reliable. Decades from now a person will be able to ask, “Is this data set really what it claims to be?” and know that that data set can be used with confidence. Related to this, the Data to Insight Center will develop tools for the maintenance and expansion of digital data sets over time so that one can not only find the most recent data but also ask the question, “What was the data set as of a certain date in the past?” and get a definitive answer.
  • Creation of tools for listing and discovering data sets. The great library of Alexandria, founded about 300 BC, had as its simple goal the collection of copies of all books ever written in the world. Today’s collections of data are too vast, and in many cases too sensitive, to be held in any one place, and the information technology challenges of managing libraries of data are much different than libraries of books. What is needed today is not a universal library of data, but rather a universal library catalog of data. The Data to Insight Center will work to develop such a catalog, including the tools to create it, and the tools to look up data stored referenced in the data catalog.
  • Creation of tools for using and understanding large data sets. This will include continued development of tools that allow analysis of weather data in real time to better predict hurricanes and tornadoes. It will also include development of tools for automated inspection of data. Such tools will analyze data and present to a human visualizations of a data set that include potentially interesting trends or new discoveries.

Academic Bulletins

PDF Version

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