BENCHMARKING DATA ANALYSIS: FACT SHEET
Data Cleansing: General Criteria GENERAL CRITERIA FOR CLEANSING BENCHMARKING DATA A systematic approach to understanding the quality of benchmarking data is not only useful to benchmarking program administrators but can also provide guidance on cleansing benchmarking data of suspect and erroneous data. The table below offers a set of criteria, based on common data quality issues, which can be used to identify and remove suspect data and improve overall data quality prior to analysis. The table can also offer guidance for developing and offering feedback communication to building owners/operators which have submitted questionable data so that the quality of future rounds of submitted data can improve over time.
Table 1. The most common benchmarking data quality issues typically found when data quality analytics are applied to a benchmarking dataset
T Y P E O F D ATA QUALIT Y ISSUE:
Duplicate Property Entries or “dummy data” entries: Too Small Building Square Footage:
CLEANSE
USE FOR
FOR
FE E DBACK
A N A LY S I S :
PURPOSES:
X
-
X
CRITERIA:
I M PAC T:
X
Property’s square footage is below minimum program requirement. Use for feedback.
Building square footage may be incorrect
Property does not have building gross floor area defined for complete timeframe
No Property Type
X
X
Property type was reclassified to “Not Available” as defined in ESPM’s Primary Property Type – EPA Calculated field. Use for feedback.
No EUI
X
X
Property did not report an EUI. Use for feedback.
See “Data Cleansing: Missing Data” fact sheet.
No ESPM Benchmark Score for Property Type That Should Have Received a Score
-
X
Use for feedback.
See “Data Cleansing: Missing Data” fact sheet.
Extremely High or Low ESPM Benchmark Score
X
X
Remove properties with score of 100, 99, 2, or 1. Use for feedback.
Total energy use or building square footage may be too high or too low for property
X
In general, Properties with site EUIs less than 2 kBtu/sf/yr or greater than 800 kBtu/sf/yr, except for Industrial/ Manufacturing or Waste Water Treatment properties. Use for feedback.
Total energy use or building square footage may be too high or too low for property
Total energy use of property was not accounted for properly Benchmark score may not have been calculated correctly
Extremely High or Low EUI
X
Zero Electric Use
X
X
Virtually all buildings in the U.S. use some amount of electrical energy; total energy use is incorrect. Use for feedback.
Default Data Use
-
X
Use for feedback.