(Invited) Chemical Sensing in the Big Data Era: How and Where Does the Chemical World Store Its Information?

摘要

In recent years, data analytics have emerged as an important tool for understanding many business and societal trends, and this has been made possible by new algorithms for collecting and processing large data sets. An attendant improvement in sensing technology has also allowed for data analytics to now be applied to physical phenomena. This has been most apparent, for example, in video analytics where CMOS imagers now cost as little as US$3, leading to the commoditization of digital imagery and the corresponding widespread use of image and video analytics across many industries. More recently, big data methods that collect and exploit chemical data have been demonstrated, where web-connected wearable sensors that track a user's local chemical exposure also upload and aggregate the data to provide real-time air-quality maps. Another recent example of chemical big data has shown that chemical monitoring of wastewater systems can provide data useful for understanding drug-abuse patterns and can inform public policy to create more resilient cities.