According to a statistics report by EMC, by the end of 2020, the total amount of data will be 44 Zettabytes. If we break this data, it will mean 5000 GB of data for every human being on this planet! That’s huge!

The adoption of big data and analytics has gathered a lot of steam across various industries – right from manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, to agriculture. There are a variety of use cases which range from hackneyed, innovative, to out & out unique. For example, on one side, we have companies like Cornerstone OnDemand which are using analytics to decipher whom to hire to solve organizations employee hiring problems while on the other side, big data is already being leveraged to fuel the automated car innovation.

Most of us have heard several big data use cases and examples – they revolve around solving specific business problems such as demand and sales forecasting, improving healthcare, detecting fraud in the financial services industry, optimizing business operations, etc. All these applications have become an integral part of BAU. How about we take a look at a few unusual cases where big data is being applied.

Application of Big Data in Parking Lots

Most of the governments across the globe are taking initiatives for turning cities into smart cities. The Intelligent transport system is an integral part of such initiatives and will stay incomplete without an intelligent parking solution.

Smart parking, also popularly referred to as “smarking”, is a solution which leverages real-time big data from mobile payment gateways and entries and exits of vehicles to detect available parking space, and subsequently, book or see when it opens up.

Smarking can tremendously help the parking industry. By leveraging cloud solutions, the parking companies can apply differential pricing while ensuring maximum capacity usage. The opening and closing of the crash barrier along with the entry and exit of a vehicle – all make up a data trail. These data points can help the parking management in many places including airports. Close to 20% of the revenue of an airport is accrued to parking and that can be maximized by implementing Data and Analytics.

Finding the Next Music Icon

Data collated from the Internet can predict who can be the next Rockstar! Yes, through the analysis of the music videos being watched on popular video channels to the comments left on the social media – all can be analyzed to understand what’s trending and provide insights into who is showing signs of being the next big star.

Organizations like the Next Big Sound are already leveraging technology to predict the probability of a star entering the billboards a year in advance. This sound analytics platform can analyze the popularity of a singer from the various social media accounts and correlate it with the type of music. The benefits are two-pronged – one, it can help the singers know how their popularity can be increased and secondly, the music companies can know how their bottom-line can be buoyed up.

Data Analytics for Emotion Measurement

The increase in the number of biometric tests has resulted in a repository filled with facial recognition & retina scan data.  All these are an important input into measuring the emotion of a person. Emotional Measurement Technology can have a wide variety of application in scenarios where companies are required to gauge audience reactions.

Organizations like Affectiva are helping brands and marketers understand their consumer emotional engagement with digital content and use that information to create the best ads and optimize media spend.

Don’t be surprised if very soon you watch horror movies which are just as scary as your emotions want them to be. Neither more nor less.

Saving the Rare Wildlife

It is extremely difficult to track endangered wild species in their home turf. The poachers are on the prowl and they are equally aware of the local terrain. Hence, big data capabilities including data coming in the form of sensors, CCTV, can be leveraged to track and monitor the movement of the animals. HP is collaborating with conservation international to leverage data analytics and provide earth insights. The data from all the devices is collated to come to a census figure which is then fed into the HP vertical platform. This platform then analyzes this data and provides the stakeholders about the regions and locations of the endangered species. Subsequently, the concerned departments can focus their time and money in ensuring that the regions are well guarded.

Create a Master Chef

Whereas a professional chef takes years to master the type and amount of the ingredients for preparing that specialized cuisine, IBMs data-crunching platform Watson can do that in a matter of minutes. IBM has already entered into a partnership with the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), NYC to implement “cognitive cooking”. This system is set to transform how chefs approach creativity. Using the vast recipe database, the in-depth knowledge of the ICE staff and chefs, and the analytics capabilities of Watson, cognitive cooking gives a new approach to flavor pairing and the creation of new dishes.

As more and more data is available for analytics, the horizons for its applications are broadening and we will continue to see some fascinating use cases and examples of big data and analytics.