Monitorology the art of observing the world

TL;DR

This paper discusses the fundamental challenges in collecting and observing data through electronic monitors, emphasizing their importance for accurate decision-making amidst the growing reliance on big data and analytics.

Contribution

It defines five key challenges in effective monitoring and illustrates each with examples, highlighting areas needing further research.

Findings

Identifies five core challenges in data observation.

Highlights the importance of effective monitoring for decision accuracy.

Emphasizes the need for research to address monitoring challenges.

Abstract

In the age of ever increasing demand for big data and data analytics, a question of collecting the data becomes fundamental. What and how to collect the data is essential as it has direct impact on decision making, system operation and control. Specifically, we focus on the art of observing the world by electronic devices such as sensors and meters that, in general, we call monitors. We define five challenges to ensure effective and efficient monitoring that still need a lot of research. Additionally, we illustrate each challenge by example. Since reliance on big data and data analytics is continuously increasing, these challenges will become ever more relevant to save the world from flood of meaningless, dumb data, leading frequently to false conclusions and wrong decisions whose impact may range from a minor inconvenience to major disasters and even loss of lives.