Data mining and linked open data – New perspectives for data analysis in environmental research

The rapid development in information and computer technology has facilitated an extreme increase in the collection and storage of digital data. However, the associated rapid increase in digital data volumes does not automatically correlate with new insights and advances in our understanding of those data. The relatively new technique of data mining offers a promising way to extract knowledge and patterns from large, multidimensional and complex data sets. This paper therefore aims to provide a comprehensive overview of existing data mining techniques and related tools and to illustrate the potential of data mining for different research areas by means of example applications. Despite a number of conventional data mining techniques and methods, these classical approaches are restricted to isolated or “silo” data sets and therefore remain primarily stand alone and specialized in nature. Highly complex and mostly interdisciplinary questions in environmental research cannot be answered sufficiently using isolated or area-based data mining approaches. To this end, the linked open data (LOD) approach will be presented as a new possibility in support of complex and inter-disciplinary data mining analysis. The merit of LOD will be explained using examples from medicine and environmental research. The advantages of LOD data mining will be weighed against classical data mining techniques. LOD offers unique and new possibilities for interdisciplinary data analysis, modeling and projection for multidimensional, complex landscapes and may facilitate new insights and answers to complex environmental questions. Our paper aims to encourage those research scientists which do not have extensive programming and data mining knowledge to take advantage of existing data mining tools, to embrace classical data mining and LOD approaches in support of gaining more insight and recognizing patterns in highly complex data sets.