Special
Issue on Big Data:
Editors' Message:
Welcome
to this special issue of Reliability Magazine.
For many years the reliability
engineering profession has been centered around the
use of data, and in fact, has in many ways pioneered
the use of data is such areas as network and computer
operations, financial transactions, statistical
quality control in manufacturing, and analysis of
failure data for reliability predictions involving
complex systems and processes. Many applications in
reliability engineering over the last half century
have involved data that are/were "Big" in the context
of the technology available at the time. What has
changed, and continues to change at a very rapid rate,
is the expansion of the applications that have access
to very large, very high velocity datasets, presented
in a variety of formats consistent with the "3Vs"
characteristic of Big Data. In reliability
engineering, much of this is driven by the
proliferation of sensors, that is, the Internet of
Things (IoT), but it includes a variety of other
sources as diverse as scientific experiments, medical
records, and social networks. The result of this is
the ability to address applications that were either
too complex, too costly, or simply impossible
previously.
The Reliability Society (RS)
continues to play an active role in the areas of Big
Data and IoT with several of its members active on the
IEEE Big Data and IoT Initiative steering committees
and contributing content to publications and
international conferences on these topics. The Big
Data Initiative (BDI) funded by the IEEE Future
Directions Committee is now in its third year of
operation and has been responsible for several new
developments including the IEEE DataPort portal, and
has hosted workshops for developing standards for Big
Data. BDI is also currently in the process of
developing several new publications on Big Data in
collaboration with several IEEE societies and
councils. Visit bigdata.ieee.org to learn more.
In this issue, we have collected
three articles which provide different view of this
emerging and exciting capability.
The first article, "Grid Reliability
Depends on Big Data" is by Steven Collier, Director of
Smart Grid Strategies at Milsoft Utility Solutions.
This article focuses on the real time operation of one
of our most important, and complex, networks. The
electric grid is not only complex and crucial, but as
outlined in this article, is undergoing fundamental
change in structure, technology, and critically, the
data that it produces for real time management and
operations.
The second article, "Farming Big
Data must allow for hills and valleys that affect
quality and reliability" is by Ron Hiller,founder of
BLX.io and Mahmoud Daneshmand of Stevens Institute of
Technology. It highlights the critical issue of the
reliability and quality of the data itself,
particularly with an eye towards use for analysis,
decision making, and control. It also presents this
within the context of another crucial industry,
farming; an industry which we perhaps do not associate
as much with big data.
The final article, "The Internet of
Things and Big Data Systems: The International Bazaar"
by Philip Laplante of Penn State University addresses
issues for reliability engineers as big data moves
from the few billion members of the "crowd" to the
hundreds of billions of members of the Internet of
things. These include issues such as security and
standards.
We hope you enjoy the articles in
this issue, and that you find these contributions to
the discussion of big data and applications within the
reliability engineering profession useful. We look
forward to your comments and suggestions.
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David
G. Belanger is chair of the IEEE
Big Data Initiative and chair of the IEEE
Reliability Society Technical Committee on Big
Data. He is also a senior research fellow at
Stevens Institute of Technology and a senior
member of IEEE. You can reach him at
dgb@ieee.org.
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Christian
K. Hansen is president of the IEEE
Reliability Society and a member of the IEEE
Big Data Initiative Steering Committee. He is
also a professor of statistics at Eastern
Washington University and a senior member of
IEEE.
You can reach him at c.k.hansen@ieee.org.
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