When applying Business Intelligence (also known as data mining) to manage large volumes of construction...

In the CMAA Emerging Technologies Committee white paper“Explorations in Data Mining”, CMAA states that the termsource datain the context of business intelligence and data mining refers todigitized elements. It explains:

“Raw data exists in myriad forms. … The first requirement of data mining, then, is todigitize that information. … For the purposes of this white paper, the term ‘source data’ refers solely to digitized elements.”

Thus, before data mining or BI tools can operate effectively, the original project data (which may initially exist in paper, drawings, or other analog forms) must be converted into a machine-readable, electronic format. Only digital data can be processed, queried, normalized, correlated, and analyzed by algorithms in a BI system.