8 Types of Big Data for a construction Project

A single large construction  project is going to collect a lot of data throughout the design and construction phase of its life culminating with all the data it will collect during its operational life of say 60 years. but the types of data can easily be split split into 6 different types of data.

When we look at all the data we generate for a building you might just look at it all and think we are entering the world of Big Data, but here we have to be a little careful on the word "big" as we compare different uses of the word Big, when we look at the 2560 terabytes of data that retailer Walmart collects every hour by capturing customer transactions, and the vast size of all the videos on /youtube although spread over many servers its estimated to be in the several Exabytes,

by comparison Birmingham city Council in 2007 had 7 terabyte of storage just for there immediate data only storage needs for  roughly 35,000 staff, this probable That this doubled every year meaning after 19 years of planning going digital and so many services adding new data types they must be in the 1000 terabytes or more, of data storage.

So is our small building to be considered big data, not on its own no,considering the list below I can see all a medium buildings data being kept within say 2 terabytes, but when we start to build our building file structure and link it into a big city data scenario them perhaps yes it is big data, not because of its data storage but use of data, from external sources, like weather centres and traffic data whose storage could easily be considered big data.

Add to that the handling problem from the shear size to the vast array of file types the different types of data and the sorts of error we are bound to see that are so common in big data sets.

So what are we looking at, my best guess is a building well need 7 different file types :

Design & Cad Data

There will be a large collection of CAD files related to any building from simple details to the larger floor files to 3D files for almost all the major cad packages, to ifc files from nay different members of the team as they update their drawings. Plus of course survey files from simple data loggers to point cloud laser scans. Its here all the emails and letters scanned in will be stored for reference.

Quick data

This will be for those files associated with immediate access, marketing web site. a more open access, ideal for web site and public data.

Related Data

Purchased data will form part of the life cycle of may building, looking at weather patterns, sensor data on incoming weather, met office data and the like, stored for easy access by the buildings autonomous software.

Dark Data

Video , pictures and audio files are now forming a great archive record and from the initial survey through to the eventual demolition a building might have several hours of footage taken.

Contractor Data

Manufacturer data of all equipment purchased, by the contractor I differentiate this from the CAD files as it will be generated by the contractors purchases of all materials and equipment, and will be detailed enough to see say an individual toilet purchased and where it was installed in the building.

Sensor Data

Over the life of a building it will record the sensor data from many thousands of small sensors embedded within the fabric of the building, some pinging data hourly some hardly at all, but some on a more frequent basis of perhaps minute by minute.

Operational data

For a building to organise its self it needs to know whats going on in its rooms, so activity booking diaries will be the norm, its not huge, but needs to be accounted for in my data types, Also stored here are the buildings operational or autonomous programs and the add on suites to support it , with records of heating temperatures and fuel use and the like.