Information held in databases with clearly defined attributes whose types are known in advance
Unstructured data
Data that has either not been structured in advance, or is unsuited to structuring
Unstructured data applications
Identifying a house or person from a photograph
Finding stories in a digitised newspaper archive
Sources of unstructured data
Machine-acquired data (satellite/aerial photography, scientific data, sensor data)
Human-generated content (business documents, emails, social media)
In the last few years, the demand for unstructured data has begun to outstrip that for structured data
A 2014 study estimated that unstructured data applications used 69 EB of the 80 EB of the data storage shipped that year, and the proportion of storage and processing devoted to unstructured data continues to increase
Uses of big data relevant to everyday lives
Targeted advertising in online services
Analysing patient mobile phone use to identify health changes
Finding links between genetic abnormalities and health conditions
The topic of personal data inevitably causes controversy because we all have different feelings about what is and is not acceptable
