Computer scientists to develop next-gen Big Data systems

Computer scientists at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, are leading a new Horizon 2020 research project to develop new ways to build and maintain IT systems that use Big Data on the web.

ALIGNED (Aligned, quality-centric software and data engineering) will receive European Commission funding of €4m.

The chief goal of ALIGNED is the development of systems that will allow developers to incorporate Big Data from the web into their applications, such that flexible apps and analytics can use data that exists in a variety of formats. This will lay the foundations for the next generation of Big Data systems that lower costs and deal with the challenges of dynamism, complexity, scale, and data inconsistency on the web.

As more and more data is published on the web, enterprises and academic researchers need ways to build and maintain both data and applications that use the data.

The project will be led by senior research fellows in computer science in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity, Dr Rob Brennan and Dr Kevin Feeney, who will be supported by Associate Professor of Computer Science Declan O’Sullivan.

Brennan said: “ALIGNED is an exciting collaboration between leading computer scientists and innovative European companies poised to increase software development productivity and agility. It will develop technology to allow software developers to incorporate Big Data from the web into their applications.”

Feeney added: “It builds on our collaboration with Leipzig University on web standardisation at the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and our key technology role in the ambitious Seshat Global History Databank, which seeks to revolutionise history, archaeology and social sciences by publishing expert-curated data on the web for every human society that ever existed. Both enterprises and academics see the power of sharing and re-using data on the web, but cleaning and maintaining data so that flexible applications or analytics can be built on it is still a challenge, ALIGNED will address this need.”

Throughout the duration of the project, ALIGNED will also offer consultancy services and advice to European businesses seeking to build data-intensive systems.