Computer Science and Informatics is our largest research area. A large team of 39 researchers submitted their research, working on a range of areas, and 90% of their work is at internationally recognised level.

All of our Business and Management research has impact that is internationally recognised. Over half of our publications are world-leading or internationally excellent.

Exploring applications of Big Data

University of Bedfordshire’s newest campus in Milton Keynes, is taking part in a revolutionary project between industry and higher education and bringing Big Data to the business community in Milton Keynes.

MK:Smart is a £16m collaborative project that is led by the Open University and aims to secure economic growth in Milton Keynes by the use of ICT technology.

At the heart of the project there will be a state of the art data acquisition and management infrastructure centre called the MK Data Hub which is located at the University of Bedfordshire's Milton Keynes campus.

The MK Data Hub will curate and make available a variety of Big Data sources to small and medium-sized enterprises in the Milton Keynes and surrounding areas.

These will include: local and national open data resources, data streams from key infrastructure networks (energy, transport, water), relevant sensor networks, satellite data and data crowd sourced from social media.

The MK Data Hub will allow businesses to use and analyse Big Data to improve their services, discover new products and grow and expand.

Big Data is complex information that can be dynamic, noisy, structured or un-structured and in a variety of sources, from spread sheets to social media to mobile devices and sensors to smart-meters and financial systems.

Traditionally we think of data as measurable, comprising vectors – a string of numbers and coordinates. But data from sources such as Twitter, Facebook, CCTV or even public court records, requires new tools in order to be extracted, analysed and modelled.

The technology from the data hub can capture and analyse any data, regardless of what type, how much there is or how fast it may be moving. Through unique algorithms data can be gathered and interpreted so better decisions are made.

There are lots of companies and organisations already using Big Data successfully. Germany’s national football team used Big Data when they won the World Cup in Brazil earlier this year. For the German team, one of their key targets ahead of the World Cup was to improve their passing speed.

The possibilities are endless and now SMEs throughout Milton Keynes can benefit from using this innovative Data Hub.

As part of our mission to conduct high quality applied and practice-based research to meet the needs of local, national and international business communities and public sector organisations, our business research team has delivered a series of successful projects researching big data and its impact on business performance.

For more information about Big Data or to get involved with the MK:Data Hub, contact Rajinder Sharma at rajinder.sharma@beds.ac.uk