NextGov.com

The University of Wisconsin's GeoDeepDive is a huge database that aims to leverage big data in the field of geosciences by helping geologists access data that otherwise would have been buried under mountains of accumulated information. Funded by a White House initiative launched in March 2012 to help government agencies, businesses, and researchers make better use of big data, GeoDeepDive will cull scanned pages from pre-Internet science journals, generations of websites, archived spreadsheets, and video clips into a database that aims to include all geological data. The system will eventually use contextual clues and technology similar to IBM’s Watson to enable geologists to query what professors Miron Livny and Christopher Re, the project's creators, refer to as dark data. "These new tools have that promise--to change the types of questions we’re able to ask and the nature of answers we get," University of Wisconsin geologist Shanan Peters says. To read further, please visit http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2013/04/welcome-data-driven-world/62319/.