Let’s look into Data Hub, a technology that will be implemented on various industries in the future.

A new expression was introduced in the government’s announcement, a ‘Korean New Deal’ project, held in July; ‘Data Dam.’ Data Dam refers to processing various public and private data in a single form for all to use like a dam, which holds water before letting it out when needed. Data collected by Data Dam can be utilized in various areas and industries and will carry out such role. Data Dam is a task that will take up the biggest chunk of government budget among the 10 Korean New Deal tasks; it was announced that a total amount of 15 trillion and 500 billion KRW - 18 trillion and 100 billion KRW if you included private financial source - over the course of 5 years would be put into this task. The government expects to see 389,000 new jobs through this Data Dam.

Data Hub, Creating Data Dam

Creating Data Dam requires Data Hub.

Creating Data Dam requires Data Hub. Data Hub is like the aforementioned Data Dam. It is a data-oriented platform which integrates and processes various data and systematically manages them to produce necessary data. It collects various data within a business, reprocesses it to create new data or collects data from other businesses for analysis and utilization. It is the Data Hub’s role to analyze existing data in various ways and add new value for better use.

Data Hub is receiving greater attention as the society in general recognizes big data as especially important resource for new growth power especially by businesses as well as the government. Numerous media including the press, broadcasting, online, etc., have frequently mentioned such aspect as well. We are already aware that we are the ones that produce data. Data created from mobile especially, which we use all the time, constantly, is expanding its size day after day.

Amount of data created and accumulated based on 5G is growing ever more (information source. Ericsson-LG).

According to Ericsson-LG’s ‘Mobility Report,’ worldwide mobile data traffic increases by more than 30% each year and will amount to 164 EB by 2025. 1 EB is as big as a billion GB, so you can imagine how much this is. Especially data created and accumulated based on 5G, which was commercialized in December 2018, is growing ever more because various smart devices ？ not just mobiles but also IoT, automatic driving cars, etc. ？ are connected via network. Then how is such enormous data affecting our lives? What does all this data that we cannot see for ourselves mean to us?

Data Is Being Used for COVID-19 Quarantine.

Data is being effectively used for COVID-19 quarantine.

Data is closer to our lives than you might think; it is being utilized in various ways in many areas that are close to our lives. The most representative case would be data used to stop the spreading of COVID-19. If there is a coronic, mobile data, credit card payment data, CCTV data, etc. are all analyzed depending on his/her route to recognize closely contacted people and determine self-quarantine. Whether a person subject to self-quarantine breaks away from the residence can also be determined by mobile location data.

Data on sales of public masks produced in March is also a model data utilization case.

Data on the sales of public masks which was produced by the government in March is also a model case of data use. At the time, people were stocking up on the masks so much many could not find a single mask. So, the government carried out a 5-day rotation system through which 1 person was able to buy 2 masks per week until supply and demand was stabilized. But since different pharmacies sold the masks at different hours and remaining stock could not be checked, people sometimes lined up for a long while to no avail. To resolve these issues, various related departments such as Ministry of Science and ICT, Ministry of Public Administration and Security, Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of SMEs and Startups collaborated with National Information Society Agency and Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service to provide public mask sales data.

When public masks are stocked in pharmacies and post offices, etc., the sales data is gathered at Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service. Then National Information Society Agency processes it in sales point, address, stock date, remaining stock, etc., and discloses it on public data portal. Various services like medical information app, map-based app, etc., took such disclosed data and provided mask stock to the public which helped greatly in resolving supply issues.

Hyundai AutoEver Develops a Data Hub Platform.

Hyundai AutoEver recently developed a Data Hub platform.

Just like the COVID-19 quarantine case, great utilization of refined data by the government and businesses can lead to solving social issues or helping the users. This is the appropriate purpose of data utilization. Many governments and businesses around the world are taking interest and participating in big data realm as it is expected to be useful for various purposes. Major businesses around the world are increasing production by optimizing manufacturing facility and process, etc. through data utilization, while also cutting production cost. Intel, the American semiconductor company, analyzed data created during the chip manufacturing process and have reduced 3 million dollars in manufacturing cost while the U.K. measures real time air quality through British Telecom Data Hub.

The Data Hub platform can be used in various industrial areas such as smart homes, automatic driving cars and smart factories.

Hyundai AutoEver carries out the Data Hub project in Korea. It has the data hub technology which supports integrating and analyzing various data for AI processing. In June, they developed a platform which can collect, store and process big data. A beta version was developed and is in testing; it is to be launched in the first half of next year. Hyundai AutoEver’s Data Hub platform is to be used for three major purposes. First, it will be sold to client companies which wish to collect and utilize big data. The current beta version is provided to Hyundai Glovis and Hyundai Mobis for related projects. Also, it will be used in relation to the platform being developed by Hyundai AutoEver to analyze and store big data. Furthermore, it will also act as a data storage which can accumulate and utilize outside data. Once this data storage is created, it can participate in the government-led data voucher business (a project that recruits data sales/processing suppliers) and provide automobile driving data to companies within the group and affiliations. Based on this, once the Hyundai AutoEver’s Data Hub platform goes commercial, we can anticipate the production of data which can be used for smart homes, automatic driving cars, smart factories, etc., through AI and IoT.

As the trend of untact service is getting more attention these days due to concerns on COVID-19, the importance of Data Hub is getting bigger because online services are being chosen to avoid face to face situations; purchasing groceries online and processing financial tasks on your mobile, spending your leisure time on media services such as IPTV, YouTube and Netflix, etc. Various data created by such untact services are used as important data for other online services. How fast you process the data to draw useful insight and make use of it for your service will determine the businesses’ digital strategy. Data Hub will continue to receive much attention as it will carry out the role of smoothing out such process. We can anticipate it to take on an important role of providing necessary data to pursue digital transformation for many businesses.

Written by. Gyeong-min Hyun (Connecting Lab)