Announcing the Key Themes of Big Data Forum 2021: Exploring Three Core Pillars

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Data, technologies, and people are the three pillars of data science. The second edition of the Forum is designed to explore these core pillars in the era of Big Data; to examine the key components of each, to identify systematic and well-defined approaches to extracting value from Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, and to assess the readiness of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean to transform Big Data into information and knowledge.

Photo: © Gig Studio.

Data Science and the future smart society

Big Data analytics and challenges require persons who can critically think about big data problems and who possess the necessary skills and knowledge to solve big data problems using big data technologies. The Forum examines the role of academia and education in big data and data science, equipping the region with the appropriate skills and competencies to address big data challenges correctly and reliably; assessing the local and regional demand for data science, the technical components of data science education and data science as a tool. It explores the tech startup ecosystem, AI workloads and the role of data science professionals in the smarter future.

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The transformational role of Big Data Technologies and Analytics

Data Science embraces Big Data infrastructures including big data warehouses, in-memory computing, as well as big data enabling technologies such as platforms of intelligence.

Rapid advances in computing technologies, software technologies, and parallel processing frameworks including the increasing popularity of web-based software continue to define the big data era. Accordingly, the Forum discusses open-source frameworks, storage and big data processing, the role of technology and analytics in the era of digital transformation, how Big Data technologies, applications and services can be tools to develop economic sectors and explores how platforms of intelligence can support the development of a Big Data Centre of Excellence.

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Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and a smarter future

A Data-driven future smarter society must embrace different data sets that can complement traditional forms of data. In the Big Data era unstructured and semi-structured data such as social media data and web data and other similar type data sets can have the potential to improve sustainable development, increase service delivery to the most vulnerable, advance interoperable modern data ecosystems and address everyday challenges through better data analytics and trend analysis.

The Forum completes the pillar of Data Science by examining Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning as powerful analytics, real world practical applications of AI, how applying more intelligent and advanced forms of analytics can extract more value from Big Data, Big Data management and machine learning, and Agenda 2030 and how data-driven algorithms and statistical models can help analyse data sets that produces real time inferences.