Big Data and Opportunities for Global Geophysics
The development of computing technology currently continues to advance and provides opportunities and challenges for several fields of study, including geophysics. Methodologically, geophysical science and engineering have experienced significant developments along with developments in computing technology. On the other hand, the existence of large amounts of data (analog and digital) is an opportunity to gain a better understanding of subsurface phenomena.
In the last decade, the topic of data and managing it well, effectively and with value has become a hot topic of discussion. Previously, in the early 70s, each data set was packaged in a large structured database system with relatively uniform variations.
“Data is a New Gold” brings to our attention that in today’s digital era, data has become a new source that has promising economic value. Nowadays, data has become something important in human civilization that provides many benefits.
In the context of Big-Data, a data collection is built in a 4V system (volume, velocity, verity, value). Each data set has a certain volume (Terra Byte), ease and speed of processing, diversity of formats, time and sources and has economic value. The 4V system became known as Big-Data. This system is supported by capable computing technology devices such as map reducer, storage server, high performance computers cluster and others. Thus, Big Data can be interpreted as a data storage medium that offers unlimited space, as well as the ability to accommodate and process various types of data very quickly and has certain economic value.
In the field of geophysics, the existence of Big-Data can provide challenges and opportunities. For more than a century, geophysics has been present to study earth phenomena based on physics and mathematics approaches. A lot of data is collected to understand the physical characteristics of the earth. One of them is understanding earthquakes and imaging subsurface structures globally. Geophysical scientists realize that the accumulation of accurate data is an important foundation for the development of scientific theories in the field of geophysics.
Currently, systematic and comprehensive studies of the earth have become the focus of geophysicists. This study includes the integration of geophysics branches such as geomagnetism, geomechanics, geodynamics and seismology. Many data bank systems are based on geophysical theory, environmental geophysics and exploration geophysics. The geophysical data that has been collected so far includes data recorded in analog books as well as digital data recorded on modern electronic devices.
Data in geophysics can be data in the form of measured values and descriptive data such as earthquake events recorded in ancient literature. In the past, scientists used words and images to record details of natural physical phenomena such as earthquakes, auroras, meteors, comets, and eclipses. Now, scientists are recording these events by taking photos and videos. In short, with the rapid development of information engineering, more and more new types of geophysical data have become available, and the total amount of geophysical data has increased explosively. So the data has now become the basis for the development of geophysical Big-Data.
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ZFZ, DPS, NTP