Patrick Buckley How IoT technology is helping candy producers make sweet profits! From chocolate bars to lollipops, gumdrops to Haribos, the confectionary industry is now worth an estimated 210$ billion worldwide. With the industry experiencing strong growth, it is no surprise...
Olivia Brookhouse When will Robots find a place in the Smart Home? With the mass introduction of smart speakers, smart doorbells, smart fridges and even smart toilets there is a world of possibilities when it comes to innovating our homes. Whilst...
Olivia Brookhouse What to expect from Artificial Intelligence in 2020? At the end of 2019 we launched our new Twitter campaign, #LUCAtothefuture to explore various Artificial Intelligence technologies to see how they will advance this year and beyond. It...
Paloma Recuero de los Santos Python for all (3): ScyPy, NumPy, Pandas…. What libraries do we need? We are taking another step in our learning of Python by studying what the modules are, and, in particular the libraries. We will see what purpose some of them...
LUCA Deep Learning and satellite images to estimate the impact of COVID19 Motivated by the fact that the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused worldwide turmoil in a short period of time since December 2019, we estimate the negative impact of...
LUCA Success Story: LUCA Transit and Highways England The transport industry is very receptive to the application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence strategies, as there are clear use cases that can maximize a companies’ efficiency and...
LUCA Mobility patterns in Lima and Callao based on Big Data technology We often think of Big Data as something exclusive to private companies. But one of the clearest applications is that of public bodies who want to improve the lives...
LUCA Where are people from Madrid going during the upcoming December holidays? During the early December bank holiday many of us take the opportunity to relax, discover new places or return to our countries of origin. This time, as a further...
GSMA Announces new developments in BD4SG InitiativeLUCA 28 September, 2017 Last week, September 19th, the GSMA announced, at the United Nations General Assembly Week in New York, new developments in its Big Data for Social Good Initiative. Eduardo Navarro, President and CEO of VIVO (Telefónica Brazil), took part in the panel where the main focus was on finding new ways to use technology for the benefit of sustainable devlopment. What is the GSMA? The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with more than 300 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organizations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Mobile World Congress Americas and the Mobile 360 Series of conferences. Announcements in last United Nations General Assembly Week The first good news announced this week is that Megafon, Telenet and Safaricom have signed on to the initiative, joining previously announced operators Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison, KDDI, KT Corporation, Millicom, MTS, NTT DOCOMO, INC., Orange, SK Telecom, Telefónica, Telenor, Telia, Turkcell, Vodafone and Zain. Therefore, today, The “Big Data for Social Good” initiative is now backed by 19 companies with a presence in 124 markets around the world. Additionally, the GSMA has established an Advisory Panel to provide guidance to the initiative, as well as coordination and integration with the broader ecosystem. The Panel is comprised of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), the Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and Data2X, as well as leading big data experts from UN agencies including Be Healthy Be Mobile, a joint initiative by WHO and ITU, OCHA, UN Global Pulse, UNDP, UNHCR and WFP. The Advisory Panel will play a fundamental role in identifying where, when and how mobile big data can best support health and humanitarian efforts. Figure 1: United Nations General Assembly Telefónica believes in sustainable innovation In Telefónica, we believe that it is possible to invest in a model of innovation squarely focused on addressing the most pressing social and environmental issues in a way that contributes to the success of the business. This is what we call “sustainable innovation”. We also believe that the best way of building value for our Company in the long term is ensuring in parallel a positive impact on the society or the environment. For that reason, from the beginning, Telefónica has embraced the Sustainable Development Goals initiative as a tool to structure our contribution to global development, actively contributing to widespread key goals with internal and external initiatives and supporting projects, which aim to tackle these targets. During the last 10 years, Telefonica has been working on proving that data can be used to improve, not only business capabilities, but also the society. A data-driven approach can be taken for each and every one of the Sustainable Development Goals, using data to measure how the public and private sector are progressing, as well as helping policy makers to shape their decisions and have the greatest social impact possible. With billions of mobile devices and internet connections around the world and new data analytic capabilities, we can use our own internal data together with external information to give back the value of data to our customers and contributing simultaneously to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN for 2030. Telefónica and Big Data for Social Good That is the reason why , in 2016, Telefonica proposed to GSMA the initiative Big Data for Social Good in alignment with GSMA project ‘Connecting everyone and everything to a better future’. Its aim is to engage mobile operators to work together and collaborate in accelerating the industry impact in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Within this initiative, Telefonica during MWC17, jointly with GSMA committed to run a trial in Brazil to showcase the potential of mobile data to face with these global challenges. Other initial trials of Big Data for Social Good for epidemics and environmental pollution are currently underway with Bharti Airtel in India, and Telenor in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand. The GSMA expects to publish the results of these trials at Mobile World Congress in February 2018. Project Sao Paulo – Big Data for Social Good The goal of this project is to run a pilot in a large city in Brazil (Sao Paulo) to demonstrate that our data can be turned into social value, analyzing the city air quality. The pilot is being run from the Big Data for Social Good Unit (LUCA) in collaboration with Telefonica Sustainable Innovation Global Direction (Telefonica S.A), Telefonica Brazil Sustainability Direction (VIVO), Sao Paulo Municipality and GSMA. Other partners will be also invited to collaborate and provide resources and data. Figure 3: Pilot Project in Sao Paulo To reach the project objectives, it is required to collect and analyze mobile and environment data from sensors, as well as, any other data source that could provide valuable information for this purpose. The project expects to show that correlation of mobile device data location with other datasets will allow to uncover insights and valuable information for local administration about how to improve traffic distribution. Moreover, the trial could come up with additional social and environmental policies that can improve citizen lives. In addition, this project gives Telefonica a stronger “right to play” in the commercial big data space: we don’t use our customer data only for our own benefit, but we use that same data to help improve the world, “giving the data back” to society. Don’t miss out on a single post. Subscribe to LUCA Data Speaks. Data Science – Helping consumers to save money and travel for lessBig Data – Driving the Future of the Automobile Industry
Patrick Buckley How AI and Machine Learning help to develop vaccines As Christmas approaches this year, we have all been gifted the great news that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has shown to be both safe and effective in creating an immune...
Patrick Buckley Is AI key to successful Real Estate investment? As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to shape the world around us, in today’s post we explore the impact of AI on commercial Real Estate investment. To what extent is...
LUCA Deep Learning and satellite images to estimate the impact of COVID19 Motivated by the fact that the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused worldwide turmoil in a short period of time since December 2019, we estimate the negative impact of...
Patrick Buckley How should you speak to children about Artificial Intelligence? In previous years, people’s relationship with technology in general, and with artificial intelligence in particular, was based on “text”, usually using specialised programming languages. Today, however, artificial intelligence has...
Patrick Buckley The Smart Train – The key to future sustainable mobility Governments know that a functional and efficient transport system is key to economic growth and social development. Well run transport infrastructure unlocks the productive potential of an economy. Naturally,...
Patrick Buckley COVID-19 Shines a light on the huge possibilities of AI in Education In 2020 remote learning platforms have become essential for students around the world as a result the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these platforms incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology which continues to...