DIR

Data collections are growing rapidly – not just in size, but in complexity. As digital technology and laboratory automation become faster and cheaper, more and more data flows from more and more sources. Also growing is the number of researchers and decision makers who are both contributing to these data sets and expecting to exploit them for their own work. They need new ways to combine, analyse and visualise this cornucopia of data. Current approaches to managing this change are not sustainable. They rely on local experts solving individual problems: what is needed is an understanding of the principles behind these solutions, so that they can be generalised and widely replicated. This will increase the value of deep understanding of data and of the systems they represent.

This theme will build a multi-disciplinary community which focuses on discovering and implementing the best strategies for supporting data-intensive researchers using the latest advances in database technology. It will engage experts from academia and leading players from industry. Many projects aim to advance data-intensive methods for specific applications: this theme will chart a path to methods and technologies that will be relevant across multiple disciplines.

The theme will draw on the latest database research and show how it can help researchers in new domains. It will also synthesis the requirements of a spectrum of application communities and formulate new challenges to the database research community.

See project home page at eSI, Edinburgh, UK.