Bigger data, Better lives

Every day, countless bytes of data are generated by smartphones across the world. With the developing data analysis technology, smartphones have turn into tools to improve lives.

Actually, data scientists have found strong correlation between food consumption and data usage, e.g. people that use more data everyday are more likely to buy high-quality food like fish and meat. This can help to better predict food supplies in developing countries in order to ease the food shortage when emergency occurs.

Another exciting example is that smartphone data is used to build a granular poverty maps, showing the location of poverty that no organization has paid attention before. Additionally, by judging from the phone usage pattern, these data can also be used to design ideal locations and new routes for current roads, and create detailed population model. With these results, NGOs can better design their strategies to supply their food.

All of these findings are just the first steps, in the future with more cell phones and smart devices, more detailed researches can be done by more groups to improve more lives.