ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the term big data is taken to mean the employment of modern predictive and prescriptive analytics to harness the potential of ‘high-volume, high-velocity, high-variety’ data sets, which are generated as by-products of routine transactions in the construction industry. Applications to construction at the firm level can include optimisation of construction schedules or reduction of construction waste, and many would argue that prescriptive analytics represent the most commercially valuable future for big data. Social network analysis does not depend on big data and, in fact, most implementations of the approach in social science research involve relatively small data sets. Big data does offer new possibilities for the construction industry, but it also highlights the challenges facing the industry in the efficient use of data at any scale. Data mining uses a set of methods developed by statisticians and database managers to find patterns in large data sets.
