Data, Information, Knowledge and Action

Databases form the necessary foundation for managing current projects and programs and for projecting future costs and property facility management department activities. Data by itself, however, is fairly useless. A skilled analyst can take raw data and manipulate it to extract patterns, trends, and inferences—information—that explain relationships between the events that constitute the data. Therefore, energy consumption figures, for example  that reveal an office using 3000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 1997 and 6000 in 2001 are data; the observation that consumption increased between 1997 and 2001 is information.

Knowledge takes information one step further by putting it in the context of experience.  For example, the increased in power consumption makes sense because occupancy in the building increased.  But since 1997, there were no energy saving measures in place such as motion-sensing automatic light switches and an efficient air conditioning. If energy-saving measures are implemented, they would expect some reduction on energy consumption.  Knowledge, therefore, is information used to explain something and even project future values.

Alex Zylberglait provides commercial real estate investment advisory as well as research, estate planning, asset allocation, valuation, financing, special assets services, transaction advisory and commercial property acquisition and disposition services.