  We give a gentle introduction to solar imaging data, focusing on the
challenges and opportunities of data-driven approaches for solar eruptions. The
various solar phenomenon prediction problems that might benefit from
statistical methods are presented. Available data products and software are
described. State-of-the-art solar eruption forecasting models with data-driven
approaches are summarized and discussed. Based on the characteristics of the
datasets and state-of-the-art approaches, we point out several promising
directions to explore from statistical modeling and computational perspectives.
