Big Data has the potential for comprehensive social, industrial and scientific value creation. The National Research Programme “Big Data” (NRP 75) has investigated this. Our researcher Reinhard Riedl is one of the authors of the final report recently published by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The use of Big Data can improve our everyday lives: medical care, mobility and energy efficiency or the supply of information. At the same time, it brings challenges, such as safeguarding democratic processes, equal treatment and fairness, or the right to anonymity in public spaces. The National Research Programme “Big Data” (NRP 75) dealt with the questions of who understands the processes behind the user interfaces, what they can be used for and how data flows can be sensibly regulated. 37 research projects investigated essential aspects of Big Data technologies and their applications, e.g. techniques to reduce data volumes, to map renewable energy sources or ethical questions of the use of Big Data in insurance or human resources.

Our researcher Reinhard Riedl contributed to the final report that has now been published. In it, the NRP75 steering group proposes:

1. Expand the training of Big Data professionals
2. Promote legal and ethical advice for Big Data research and development projects
3. Enable certification of the properties of Big Data applications Integrate Big Data into public and private organisations
4. Increase the use of Big Data technologies in the health sector
5. Strengthen policy-making and its evaluation with Big Data
6. Encourage shared data collections, application benchmarks and open source software Update and create appropriate regulation
7. Seek more proactive regulation of Big Data
8. Promote data protection and digital sovereignty in Big Data applications
9. Strengthen cross-border harmonisation of regulations

The full report can be found here.

Further information

National Research Programme NRP 75 BigData Dialogue – BigData Dialogue

SNSF