Big Data, Open Source & Ethics - The Lessons From Movement Data

Working with 150 billion rows & 10 terabytes of sensitive location data opens up a number of technical and ethical challenges.

With a bit of tenacity - the technical challenges can be solved thanks to the variety of open source geospatial tools available for use on-premise and in the cloud. The ethical challenges aren’t so easy to resolve when there are no tools and little industry or regulatory experience to lean on.

This quick fire talk will run you through the geospatial tools available for big data analysis, including a comparison of PostGIS and GeoMesa; as well as touch on the data governance & ethics issues that arise when you’re able to use those tools to work out where hundreds of thousands of people live, work and play.

Presentation type: Lightning

Session: Lightning Talks

Presenter

Hugh Saalmans

Hugh Saalmans is part of the MobilityAI team at IAG; building a big data and analytics platform for movement data.  For over 20 years, Hugh has specialised in desktop mapping through to cloud based geo-analytics, and everything in between. After a brief stint as a hydrographic surveyor, Hugh’s career has included consulting, pre-sales & product management roles at MapInfo (Pitney Bowes), RP Data (CoreLogic), Intergraph and MapData Services. He’s considered an authority on the PSMA’s Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF) and the use of geospatial information in the insurance industry. Hugh is an avid supporter of hackfests, open data, open source & open standards. Not many people know he has a Bachelor of Surveying (honours) from UNSW.