The Adoption of Big Data Concepts for Sustainable Practices Implementation in the Construction Industry Paola Reyes Faculty of Science and Engineering University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, United Kingdom p.reyesveras@wlv.ac.uk Dr. Subashini Suresh Faculty of Science and Engineering University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, United Kingdom s.subashini@wlv.ac.uk Dr. Suresh Renukappa Faculty of Science and Engineering University of Wolverhampton Wolverhampton, United Kingdom suresh.renukappa@wlv.ac.uk Abstract The global construction business is on a point of a paradigm shift. The exponential growth of digital technologies, the increasing impacts of climate change, impending Brexit and looming social and environmental pressures are driving change to the construction industry. Increasingly policies press for the adoption of sustainability and construction organisations are realising that small sustainable impacts are no longer enough. Therefore, measurement is one of the keys to the implementation of sustainable construction strategies. Advances in data gathering, computing power and connectivity mean that construction organisations have more information and data than ever before. Collecting, analysing and understanding those large volumes of available data, known as Big Data, about how an organisation operates sustainably leads to knowledge that can improve decision making, refine goals and focus efforts. However, when it comes to sustainability the great thing about big data is that it is unlocking the ability of businesses to understand and act on what is typically their biggest sustainable (i.e. economic, social and environmental) impacts – the ones outside their control. Measuring and understanding how doing business really does affect the natural world will open new opportunities for bringing sustainability inside an organisation: creating change, cutting costs and boosting long-term profitability in a resource-constrained world. Still, there are issues and challenges around gathering sustainability-related data, as well as in analysing and interpreting of data points. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore the barriers to adopting big data related to sustainable strategies. The relationship between Policy Making, Big Data and sustainability is still in early stages, but already several applications can be mention to the environment, health and construction, such as biodiversity loss monitoring, pollution zones Identification, endangered species location, smart energy management, cost reduction or investment assessment. In the same way, barriers and opportunities were identified, for instance: the lack of financial resources and business case, skills and training, unequal opportunity and security and disclosure issues among the barriers, and partnership, emerging and accessible technology, personalization of the environment among the opportunities. Finally, the biggest challenge presented by the implementation of Big Data is concept standardization, since there are many areas in which one way or another is making use of this technology without being recognized as such. In the same way, the greatest asset that represents the use of Big Data for sustainability is the identification of the future causes and consequences of climate change and its subsequent prevention or mitigation in time. Key Words: Barriers, Big Data, Construction, Environment, Policies, Sustainability I. INTRODUCTION The unstoppable worldwide technological development has influenced almost all areas of human life, from the development of new medical techniques to mobile devices that allow instant access to billions of databases, placing large amounts of knowledge within the reach of billions. At the same time, this software and devices have the ability to capture information from its users and the surrounding environment. For years, this information generated by the devices that surround us every day has been collected, stored and analysed with different purposes such as commercial use like the identification of factors that allow prediction of user consumption and the optimization of resources utilization such as energy. The volumes of data captured grows exponentially every second so conventional analysis tools have become obsolete. For these situations, a solution known as Big Data (BD) has emerged and its application can be found in almost all areas of human development. The implementation of policies by governments that allow complete adoption of sustainability and the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in the case of developing countries and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for the European Union (EU) and other developed countries has occupied the number one position of governments agenda. The use of new tools and new technologies play a major role in the implementation of new policies regardless of the area, the use of big data could allow the measurement of policy impact and retrofit them to adjust and adapt as per requirements and to improve decision making. Another example of the possible use of BD is the construction industry and its sustainable approach, where the production data is meet through new design methods such as BIM and other tools that generate large volumes of digital data containing the specifications and characteristics of the projects, as well as the use of smart devices in new projects and existing buildings that generate data in real time of the internal operation of the buildings as well as the people who use them. The analysis of this data is what opens the way to the efficiency of resources from the design stages to the end of the useful life of the construction projects, as well as the reduction and management of waste throughout this period, which is the main objective of sustainability and whose precepts can also be applied to the operational management stage of existing buildings. The method used to carry out this research has been a review and analysis of the latest Big Data publications with