OSCRE International — a consortium of global real estate players advocating consistent, open standards for the administration and exchange of data — is targeting the asset-level information increasingly needed for ESG reporting and compliance. A brainstorming session is slated for New York City later this month to explore approaches for integrating and harmonizing data from multiple sources, including real estate operators’ in-house platforms and external utilities.

“Our industry continues to face significant challenges with collecting, validating and reporting on ESG data, as well as on other meaningful metrics,” acknowledges Soheil Pourhashemi, senior vice president and head of technologies at Brookfield Properties, who serves as chair of the OSCRE board of directors. “I’m excited to tackle these challenges to help drive the industry forward.”

OSCRE’s environmental data standards project is a newly launched initiative in 2022 to support the real estate industry in more effectively measuring its impact on the environment. Real estate owners and occupiers, investors and fund managers, service providers and software developers are invited to collaborate on the development of platform-agnostic standards that could support meaningful benchmarking and building-level performance evaluation.

“Organizations utilize this data internally to inform decisions, to report progress for annual reports and for external benchmarking platforms like GRESB and expanding regulatory reporting requirements,” OSCRE communication states. “While what they do with the data may vary, they share a common need for what’s collected at the real estate asset level that’s accessible, consistent and can be exchanged across multiple systems, providing a catalyst to attract more investment in real estate.”