“With ICTs everywhere, data is being generated everywhere,” says ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “We have amassed an enormous wealth of data, creating a resource of enormous productive value.”
The second issue of the ITU Journal – themed ‘Data for Good’ – features 15 papers addressing the data dimensions of contemporary innovation in fields such as blockchain, network traffic-pattern prediction, aviation safety, smart sustainable cities, environmental resilience, healthcare and artificial intelligence.
These papers explore the growing importance of data in view of technical considerations as well as those relevant to business, governance, policy, law and consumer protection.
The authorship features diverse geographic representation, resulting in an issue rich in different perspectives on data’s potential to support social and economic development.
< Download the second issue of the ITU Journal >
The peer-reviewed ITU Journal publishes original research on technical innovation in ICT and associated transformations in business, governance and society.
“Contributions from leading minds in science and engineering provide decision-makers in the public and private sector with unique insight into the latest developments in ICT and prospects for future innovation,” says Secretary-General Zhao.
“In both its first and second issue, the ITU Journal has demonstrated its dedication to an interdisciplinary study of our highly interconnected world,” says the ITU Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Jian Song of Tsinghua University.
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Papers in the second issue include:
- Digitalized Water and Smart Cities – How Can Telecommunications Networks be used for Environmental Resilience?
- Data for Good in Africa – Towards Increased Access and Enabling Data Policies
- Data Driven Decision Making Processes, Data Service Applications for Global Aviation Safety
Data is omnipresent in ITU technical work
ITU standards are capitalizing on advances in data analytics in fields spanning network orchestration, smart cities, multimedia coding, quality assessment, cloud computing, security and more.
The motivations are compelling, highlights Chaesub Lee, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau: “Analyses of network-generated data bring more automation, precision and dynamism to network management and control. Data generated by smart cities informs the improvement of public services and the efficiency and environmental sustainability of city operations. Multimedia services build on advances in data compression and data analytics assessing performance, quality of service and quality of experience. Cloud computing systems record event data from aircraft, cars and other connected machinery to pinpoint the source of performance anomalies. Security measures for data protection are fundamental in building trust in ICT.”
City leaders are looking to ITU for data processing and management specifications to support interoperability and data sharing in smart cities home to large-scale Internet of Things applications.
ITU studies of machine learning are investigating novel solutions to challenges surrounding data quality and availability, experimenting with machine learning algorithms built on datasets as well as models incorporating expert knowledge.
ITU and the World Health Organization have launched a new collaboration initiative to develop data-driven evaluation methods for the performance benchmarking of Artificial Intelligence use cases in health.
