Data are being generated at a phenomenal and ever growing rate. It comes from numerous sources including distributed sensors, social media, images and text documents. This ‘tsunami of data’ needs to be stored and analysed speedily and efficiently. Traditional approaches to managing data are simply not powerful and capable enough to handle the large data volumes. The characteristics and features of such big data, such as data from social media or generated by ambient sensors, are entirely different in nature from traditional enterprise data or information. New solutions and computational paradigms which allow us to analyse, understand, store, retrieve and visualize big data are badly needed. They are fostering new research directions in computer science and technology, and in the cognitive sciences. In addition to collection, storage, processing and retrieval of large quantities of data, some research seeks to understand the mechanisms by which humans or intelligent systems can absorb such information and apply that information to solve complex problems or provide different services