Research essay - Main Body

Big data – what classify them and why Shell needs them? 

Big data represents a set of too large and too complex data to manage them with traditional method of processing. The most popular characteristic to recognise big data is 5Vs: volume, variety, velocity, veracity, and value. (Gudivada et al., 2015) Volume refers to amount of collected data, rather than thousands of rows Big Data can be millions of rows and billions of columns. Variety specifies that there will be complex type of data, whereas velocity refers to speed of growth and creation of new data. (EMC Education Services, 2015) Veracity suggest that data may have missing data or quality issues for secondary use, when captured for primary reasons. Lastly, value represents the potentials which can be gained from Big Data. (Brennan and Bakken, 2015)

 

Big data found its inevitable way to become integral part of multi-billion businesses such as Royal Dutch Shell. The work of Marr’s (2016) reveals that Shell is not only using Big Data to monitor and maintain their equipment, but Big Data takes crucial part in exploration of new sources. It is traditionally involving inserting sensor into the earth to pick up low frequency caused by tectonic activity. Where before test could involve few thousand readings, today it will typically contain a million. Thanks to this huge amount of data the prediction of potential source can be much more accurate, and oil-barons can save millions in revenue. From every business aspect, Big Data became merged on many external sources into complex algorithms designed to optimise and profit the global multi-staged operation commonly known as Shell.