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What's the Big Deal About Big Data?

Day in and day out, we generate data through credit card transactions, mobile Apps, even when we’re commuting to work, we’re generating data. And all of that data has potential uses for the private or public sector.

This week, some of the leading minds in what’s now called big data gathered in Pittsburgh to talk about ways to utilize this information.

Jerome Pesenti, Chief Scientist of big data at IBM, Pittsburgh DataWorks board member and co-founder of Vivisimo, says he wants to make big data more accessible and make it possible to draw more insight from the data generated.

Already, big data has numerous positive implications. For example, Pesenti says weather and historical data can be used to find the most efficient places to build wind turbines.

"We' combined literally trillions of data points to make a decision," he says.

In Pittsburgh in particular, he's is working with the county and city on a project called the Open Data Portal. He says for example, sometimes it can be difficult to access legal information or house assessment data.

"We want to create a portal so any citizen or company can leverage the information for their own good."

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