This book explores how data about our everyday online behaviour are collected and how they are processed in various ways by algorithms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The book investigates the socioeconomic effects of these technologies, and the evolving regulatory landscape that is aiming to nurture the positive effects of these technology evolutions while at the same time curbing possible negative practices. The volume scrutinizes growing concerns on how algorithmic decisions can sometimes be biased and discriminative; how autonomous systems can possibly disrupt and impact the labour markets, resulting in job losses in several traditional sectors while creating unprecedented opportunities in others; the rapid evolution of social media that can be addictive at times resulting in associated mental health issues; and the way digital Identities are evolving around the world and their impact on provisioning of government services. The book also provides an in-depth understanding of regulations around the world to protect privacy of data subjects in the online world; a glimpse of how data is used as a digital public good in combating Covid pandemic; and how ethical standards in autonomous systems are evolving in the digital world. A timely intervention in this fast-evolving field, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of digital humanities, business and management, internet studies, data sciences, political studies, urban sociology, law, media and cultural studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and science and technology studies. It will also be of immense interest to the general readers seeking insights on daily digital lives.

This book provides a systematic and comparative description of the vast number of research issues related to the quality of data and information. It does so by delivering a sound, integrated and comprehensive overview of the state of the art and future development of data and information quality in databases and information systems. To this end, it presents an extensive description of the techniques that constitute the core of data and information quality research, including record linkage (also called object identification), data integration, error localization and correction, and examines the related techniques in a comprehensive and original methodological framework. Quality dimension definitions and adopted models are also analyzed in detail, and differences between the proposed solutions are highlighted and discussed. Furthermore, while systematically describing data and information quality as an autonomous research area, paradigms and influences deriving from other areas, such as probability theory, statistical data analysis, data mining, knowledge representation, and machine learning are also included. Last not least, the book also highlights very practical solutions, such as methodologies, benchmarks for the most effective techniques, case studies, and examples. The book has been written primarily for researchers in the fields of databases and information management or in natural sciences who are interested in investigating properties of data and information that have an impact on the quality of experiments, processes and on real life. The material presented is also sufficiently self-contained for masters or PhD-level courses, and it covers all the fundamentals and topics without the need for other textbooks. Data and information system administrators and practitioners, who deal with systems exposed to data-quality issues and as a result need a systematization of the field and practical methods in the area, will also benefit from the combination of concrete practical approaches with sound theoretical formalisms.

In recent decades, there has been a major shift in the way researchers process and understand scientific data. Digital access to data has revolutionized ways of doing science in the biological and biomedical fields, leading to a data-intensive approach to research that uses innovative methods to produce, store, distribute, and interpret huge amounts of data. In Data-Centric Biology, Sabina Leonelli probes the implications of these advancements and confronts the questions they pose. Are we witnessing the rise of an entirely new scientific epistemology? If so, how does that alter the way we study and understand life—including ourselves? Leonelli is the first scholar to use a study of contemporary data-intensive science to provide a philosophical analysis of the epistemology of data. In analyzing the rise, internal dynamics, and potential impact of data-centric biology, she draws on scholarship across diverse fields of science and the humanities—as well as her own original empirical material—to pinpoint the conditions under which digitally available data can further our understanding of life. Bridging the divide between historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science, Data-Centric Biology offers a nuanced account of an issue that is of fundamental importance to our understanding of contemporary scientific practices.

Data matching (also known as record or data linkage, entity resolution, object identification, or field matching) is the task of identifying, matching and merging records that correspond to the same entities from several databases or even within one database. Based on research in various domains including applied statistics, health informatics, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, database management, and digital libraries, significant advances have been achieved over the last decade in all aspects of the data matching process, especially on how to improve the accuracy of data matching, and its scalability to large databases. Peter Christen’s book is divided into three parts: Part I, “Overview”, introduces the subject by presenting several sample applications and their special challenges, as well as a general overview of a generic data matching process. Part II, “Steps of the Data Matching Process”, then details its main steps like pre-processing, indexing, field and record comparison, classification, and quality evaluation. Lastly, part III, “Further Topics”, deals with specific aspects like privacy, real-time matching, or matching unstructured data. Finally, it briefly describes the main features of many research and open source systems available today. By providing the reader with a broad range of data matching concepts and techniques and touching on all aspects of the data matching process, this book helps researchers as well as students specializing in data quality or data matching aspects to familiarize themselves with recent research advances and to identify open research challenges in the area of data matching. To this end, each chapter of the book includes a final section that provides pointers to further background and research material. Practitioners will better understand the current state of the art in data matching as well as the internal workings and limitations of current systems. Especially, they will learn that it is often not feasible to simply implement an existing off-the-shelf data matching system without substantial adaption and customization. Such practical considerations are discussed for each of the major steps in the data matching process.

The vision of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence describes a world of technology which is present anywhere, anytime in the form of smart, sensible devices that communicate with each other and provide personalized services. However, open interconnected systems are much more vulnerable to attacks and unauthorized data access. In the context of this threat, this book provides a comprehensive guide to security and privacy and trust in data management.

This volume focuses on the theory and practice of data stream management, and the novel challenges this emerging domain poses for data-management algorithms, systems, and applications. The collection of chapters, contributed by authorities in the field, offers a comprehensive introduction to both the algorithmic/theoretical foundations of data streams, as well as the streaming systems and applications built in different domains. A short introductory chapter provides a brief summary of some basic data streaming concepts and models, and discusses the key elements of a generic stream query processing architecture. Subsequently, Part I focuses on basic streaming algorithms for some key analytics functions (e.g., quantiles, norms, join aggregates, heavy hitters) over streaming data. Part II then examines important techniques for basic stream mining tasks (e.g., clustering, classification, frequent itemsets). Part III discusses a number of advanced topics on stream processing algorithms, and Part IV focuses on system and language aspects of data stream processing with surveys of influential system prototypes and language designs. Part V then presents some representative applications of streaming techniques in different domains (e.g., network management, financial analytics). Finally, the volume concludes with an overview of current data streaming products and new application domains (e.g. cloud computing, big data analytics, and complex event processing), and a discussion of future directions in this exciting field. The book provides a comprehensive overview of core concepts and technological foundations, as well as various systems and applications, and is of particular interest to students, lecturers and researchers in the area of data stream management.

Smart Delivery Systems: Solving Complex Vehicle Routing Problems examines both exact and approximate methods for delivering optimal solutions to rich vehicle routing problems, showing both the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. It shows how to apply machine learning and advanced data analysis techniques to improve routing systems, familiarizing readers with the concepts and technologies used in successfully implemented delivery systems. The book explains both the latest theoretical and practical advances in intelligent delivery and scheduling systems and presents practical applications for designing new algorithms for real-life scenarios.

This exceptional work provides readers with an introduction to the state-of-the-art research on data warehouse design, with many references to more detailed sources. It offers a clear and a concise presentation of the major concepts and results in the subject area. Malinowski and Zimányi explain conventional data warehouse design in detail, and additionally address two innovative domains recently introduced to extend the capabilities of data warehouse systems: namely, the management of spatial and temporal information.

A guide to applying data-centric security concepts for securing enterprise data to enable an agile enterprise.

This textbook covers all central activities of data warehousing and analytics, including transformation, preparation, aggregation, integration, and analysis. It discusses the full spectrum of the journey of data from operational/transactional databases, to data warehouses and data analytics; as well as the role that data warehousing plays in the data processing lifecycle. It also explains in detail how data warehouses may be used by data engines, such as BI tools and analytics algorithms to produce reports, dashboards, patterns, and other useful information and knowledge. The book is divided into six parts, ranging from the basics of data warehouse design (Part I - Star Schema, Part II - Snowflake and Bridge Tables, Part III - Advanced Dimensions, and Part IV - Multi-Fact and Multi-Input), to more advanced data warehousing concepts (Part V - Data Warehousing and Evolution) and data analytics (Part VI - OLAP, BI, and Analytics). This textbook approaches data warehousing from the case study angle. Each chapter presents one or more case studies to thoroughly explain the concepts and has different levels of difficulty, hence learning is incremental. In addition, every chapter has also a section on further readings which give pointers and references to research papers related to the chapter. All these features make the book ideally suited for either introductory courses on data warehousing and data analytics, or even for self-studies by professionals. The book is accompanied by a web page that includes all the used datasets and codes as well as slides and solutions to exercises.