Big Data Analytics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Making Sustainability Science Part of the Bottom Line

In this article we discuss various aspects of applying big data computation to sustainable and resilient management practices, leading to proactive responses to ecological and financial issues. All the sensors and data gathering engines over the years have inevitably created so-called “big data,” with changes in data generation creating new filing, storage, and access requirements with more to come. The move to Open Data access has made these data available to all, but these new sources of knowledge and decision support have not been exploited purposefully by many corporations. The needs of the environment and human societies must not be forgotten, but seem to be increasingly subsumed by the frenetic scramble to monetize data and information for profit. Destruction of the environment and resulting species extinctions are ongoing as well as damages caused by misuse of personal data. Here, we discuss the costs of corporate neglect of social, environmental and economic responsibility for the sake of unrelenting profit. Usually a discussion of costs ends with the bottom line, hopefully in the black, which is the first bottom line “Profit”. We are arguing for the conversation to include other bottom lines, i.e. the community or “People” and the environment or “Planet.” These are the three P's, three bottom lines, or 3BL.