Apples to Oranges: Comparing Building Materials Data

This paper investigates the specific issues that make the comparisons of sustainability and performance metrics problematic. It discusses the isolation of industries with regards to reporting of data and range of dialects in terminology that result. It then presents the wide landscape of sustainability and performance metrics that exist across the sector and the distribution of data that is reported by manufacturers on these metrics. As the sector embraces greater transparency, this research uses a base set of seventy building materials to show the quantities of data that have been published by manufacturers. This analysis reveals a landscape of big data fraught with substantial voids in information. The paper concludes with an analysis of which industries embrace publication of data and harmonization.

keywords: Materials, Big Data, Sustainability, Performance