Big Data to be Crunched at AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety in Austin, TX

The business and industrial implications of the exponentially increasing quantities of information available via electronic channels — often referred to as “big data” — will be explored in a new Big Data Analytics Topical Conference, part of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE’s) 2015 Spring Meeting and 11th Global Congress on Process Safety. The meeting, which takes place at the Hilton Austin and Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, from April 26 through 30, is expected to attract more than 2,000 chemical engineering practitioners from around the world, who will share their knowledge on a spectrum of topics relevant to engineers working in the chemicals, petrochemicals, energy, and allied fields.

Big data offers today’s engineers, academic researchers, and industry leaders unprecedented opportunities to improve engineering and business practices, while creating associated challenges related to information capture, filtering, analysis, and processing. Those organizations and engineers that can most effectively tap into and apply this information to their work have a strategic and competitive advantage in today’s global markets. To that end, the Big Data Analytics conference will introduce attendees to the concepts and methods surrounding big data’s applications — incorporating perspectives from researchers and industry representatives from several engineering sectors.

For example, a Wednesday, April 29, session on Big Data in Smart Manufacturing, will examine topics such as predictive analytics — in which companies can use data analysis to predict which products will be most successful in the market place, allowing those companies to determine where to invest research and resources.

Another big-data session with practical applications in industry is devoted to upstream engineering, i.e., the exploration and production of oil. In this session, a talk on big data in product and process simulations will show how data drawn from computer modeling of new products and processes can lead to designs for better-performing, more cost effective, and safer oil drilling rigs, subsea equipment, offshore risers, and other products of crucial importance to the oil and gas industries.

Also on Wednesday, a Big Data Analytics Panel Discussion will explore the technology, safety, and security aspects of big data use, and its potential for improving operations and process safety management in the chemicals, refining, oil, and gas industries. The panel will feature perspectives of Lloyd Colegrove, Data Services Director and Fundamental Problem Solving Director at Dow Chemical; Michael Firstenberg, Director of Industrial Security at Waterfall Security Solutions; Deborah Grubbe, President and Owner of Operations and Safety Solutions LLC; and Ted Wasserman, Product Manager at Tableau Software. 

In addition the Big Data Analytics Conference, the AIChE’s Spring Meeting includes topical conferences devoted to shale gas and tight oil, manufacturing, clean energy technologies, natural gas utilization, petroleum refining and exploration, distillation, ethylene production, and many other topics of importance to chemical engineers.

The Global Congress on Process Safety incorporates the programming of the 30th Center for Chemical Process Safety International Conference; the 49th Loss Prevention Symposium, the 17th Process Plant Safety Symposium, and a new symposium on emergency relief systems. It also includes a Process Safety Management Mentoring (PSM²) Forum, which is dedicated to sharing process safety knowledge with young engineers entering the oil, gas, chemicals, and allied fields.

For more information about the conference or related workshops and meetings, please go to: http://www.aiche.org/spring.