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6 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Introduction 7

Each chapter begins with a list of informational objectives for the chapter.
This is an application of instructional system design intended to ensure that the
purpose for each chapter is clearly defined in advance so that it can be addressed
in the ensuing content. As I consider instructional system design to be the ap-
plication of system engineering techniques to instructional materials, I thought
it would be appropriate to apply this technique in this book.
The content of Chapters 2–12 is summarized in the following sections.

Chapter 2
This chapter provides an overview of the questions that can be addressed by
big data and analytics tools and techniques. The traditional system engineering
approach to the development of a solution or answer to a problem defines the
problem with a set of requirements. To a system engineer, this seems logical.
However, experience has shown that that when people describe an issue to be
addressed and subsequently understand possible solutions, they change their
minds about the problem based on the new information that they have just re-
ceived about what can be done. For this reason, the book addresses early on the
definition of questions that can be answered through the application of big data
and analytics techniques. The idea is to fully support the operation of a what-
how cycle within the context of the book, through the adoption of a specific
methodology as shown in Figure 1.2
The what-how methodology begins with questions to be addressed, which
feed into requirements that incorporate needs, issues, problems, and objectives,
defining the questions to be addressed, explaining what big data is, and then de-
fining what can be done. Using a combination of the questions to be addressed
and the definition of the solutions that come later, it is possible to enable read-
ers to develop their own customized methodology to ensure that final solutions
take full account of what needs to be done and how it can be done. Defining
the questions to be addressed is placed at the beginning of the methodology to
frame the subject and to introduce readers to the value of big data and analytics.

Figure 1.2 The what-how cycle methodology.