Looking to capitalize on the vast stores of equipment performance data it has captured from its massive rental fleet, United Rentals announced a broad expansion of its Total Control fleet-management system and is hinting at major advances yet to come with Big Data and fully connected jobsites.

Construction cost data provider Gordian has launched a big-data-driven service designed to predict construction project cost changes up to three years into the future.

Every time a driver hits the road, Big Data comes along for the ride, hitchhiking on cell phones, location-based apps and vehicle hardware.

In a recent presentation at a San Francisco conference on optics and photonics, researchers presented papers describing their successful tests of optical data transmission tools, which soon may replace current data centers’ thousands of miles of fiber-optic cables with overhead layer of infrared laser beams, lenses and mirrors.

In its remaining months, the Obama administration is accelerating one of its most ambitious efforts to narrow pay gaps by gender, race and ethnicity.