A Liverpool academic has said he hopes to use Big Data in the fight against the Zika virus.
The mosquito-borne聽virus has been declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organization and is suspected of leading to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains.
Now Simon Maskell, Professor of Autonomous Systems at the聽 University of Liverpool, is hoping technology can be used to ensure resources are deployed where they鈥檙e most needed.
鈥淭he challenge is to turn data into information pertinent to decision-making,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 vital to me that someone does something on the back of the analysis of the data and that this decision is a step to achieving some objective.
鈥淚鈥檓 currently talking with UNICEF about how to prioritise their activities in South America in response to Zika. I鈥檝e also recently worked for MoD to help them figure out how to combine data from GP surgeries, hospital admissions and Twitter to provide early warnings of a flu epidemic.
鈥漃rof Maskell was talking at a Big Data and Internet of Things conference organised by law firm Weightmans in conjunction with 老九品茶Cloud and sponsored by the University of Liverpool.
He explained his role to the audience at the Martin Luther King Building, in Liverpool: 鈥淚 aim to invent new algorithms that will enable computers to help both people and robots make the right decisions.
鈥淚 would describe myself as somewhere between a computer scientist, a statistician and an engineer. The computer scientist in me wants to use computers , the engineer wants to solve problems and the statistician wants to do it so it works.
鈥淚 think the key (to Big Data) is bringing people together who have the skills. You need people who understand the problem. There鈥檚 no sense in chucking algorithms that somebody tells聽 you is really good at some data set and expect it to produce magic. You need that combination of skills but it鈥檚 really about skills and not about hardware.
鈥滺e said the university has partnered with the UK centre for supercomputing at STFC’s聽Hartree Centre to 鈥渙pen the eyes鈥� of students to the potential of Big Data.