Asif Gill Blogs

Information management is one of the most important “Business Capabilities” of government emergency agencies (EA) in preventing, preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters . EA have shown a significant interest in the use of cloud-based social media such as Twitter and Facebook for crowd-sourcing, managing and distribution of disaster related information. The effective management of crowd sourced information (via social media) is all about being proactive in recognising and addressing the “Crowd-Sourced Information Management Challenges” before they turn into problems. This article presents a template based tool “ Crowd Sourced Information Management Challenges’ Assessment Matrix ”. This assessment tool can be useful for government agencies in assessing crowd-sourced information management challenges and developing a proactive strategy for the use of social media for crowd-sourcing, managing and distribution of disaster related information . Major Categories

BigData is another catchphrase which is getting a vast attention in both academic and industry forums. However, the question is whether it is just a buzzword or a real opportunity for business organisations. BigData term generally applies to the large size of the data. But, it is more than the large size. Organisations need to understand what does it really mean – a hype or reality? This blog post explains five BigData characteristics for business organisations to help them understanding the BigData characteristics and uncovering the embedded business opportunities.   Figure 1: V5 Big Data Lens (Dr. Asif Q. Gill 2012) 1. Volume – This applies to the large size or volume of the data that cannot be managed via traditional means. 2. Variety – Large volume of data or BigData is more than the data size. It could also be in a number of different forms such as structured or un-structured, text, images, videos etc. It can come from a number of different sources, d