Fecha de publicación: 01/06/2016 Fuente: Wipo "BigData" A regional big data node comprising: a network interface through which the regional big data node receives real time process control data from a plurality of local big data nodes in a plurality of regions; a big data storage area; a big data receiver that receives the data from the network interface and stores it in the big data storage area; a big data analyser that performs a learning analysis of at least a portion of the stored process control data and generates learned knowledge from the learning analysis. The learned knowledge may be stored, transmitted to a portion of the process control plant, or an operation of the control plant may be changed because of the learned data. The regions may be formed based on geographical, physical, functional or logical groupings. The local big data node may include a process control device, a gateway device, an access point, a routing device or a historian device. The process control device may be a controller, a field device or an I/O device. The learning analysis may include a regression analysis, random forest, pattern recognition, predictive or correlation analysis, principle component analysis or heuristic learning.