[1] It is concerned with methods to calculate the value of data collected, stored, analyzed and traded by organizations.
[citation needed] Traditional accounting techniques used to value organizations were developed in an era before high-volume data capture and analysis became widespread and focused on tangible assets (machinery, equipment, capital, property, materials etc.
[2] Notably, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, a number of businesses lost significant amounts of data.
[9] Due to the wide range of potential datasets and use cases, as well as the relative infancy of data valuation, there are no simple or universally agreed upon methods.
For instance, secure data sharing requires careful protection of individual privacy or organization intellectual property.
[13] Such methods can be used to determine if appending, expanding, or augmenting an existent dataset may improve the modeling or understanding of the underlying phenomenon.