Data

With respect to environmental informatics, data can be numerical data, such as U.S. energy consumption in 1980 by sector, tables of numerical data, such as a table of U.S. energy consumption from 1970 to 1994, or non-numerical facts, such as a the name of the laboratory that supplies the Department of Energy with valuable data.

Data is the base of all systems. The organization and establishment of relationships among the data leads to information, which is the next step in a value-added system. (Taylor, 1986, p. 7)

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