Problem

LCA practitioners, could use Cabestan during the Life cycle inventory phase. Thus, they would need to import the assets gathered by Cabestan in their favorite LCA tools.

We should provide a data exporter for LCA data format which could be used to populate LCA tools.

Solution

In a LCA context, the assets will be considered as flows more precisely as a Product Flow
Gathered assets could be transfer to an LCA tools or databases. JSON-LD is one of the main LCA format. Supported by greendelta who are the main developers of OpenLCA. JSON-LD is human-readable.

LCA DATA could be exported :

• as files
• Could be pushed in an online Life cycle database

LCA data format should be linked with their impact. The exporter should provide a way to map the assets with their impacts.

Data format

{
  "@context": "http://greendelta.github.io/olca-schema/context.jsonld",
  "@type": "Flow",
  "@id": "4a40cb39-e306-3649-b6da-ca061e384e23",
  "name": "electricity, high voltage, at grid",
  "category": {
    "@type": "Category",
    "@id": "773bee4a-6f9a-41d9-b8fb-c400fb9960cf",
    "name": "supply mix"
  },
  "flowType": "PRODUCT_FLOW",
  "location": {
    "@type": "Location",
    "@id": "28840420-4e3d-3522-a930-8317344a285d",
    "name": "Poland"
  },
  "flowProperties": [
    {
      "@type": "FlowPropertyFactor",
      "referenceFlowProperty": true,
      "conversionFactor": 1.0,
      "flowProperty": {
        "@type": "FlowProperty",
        "@id": "f6811440-ee37-11de-8a39-0800200c9a66",
        "name": "Energy"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Alternatives

Few services are compatible with JSON-LD for instance SimaPro cannot read JSON-LD format. We should be able to provide a way to export the data in a more common format.

GreenDelat provides a Java converter for :

• EcoSpold 1
• EcoSpold 2
• ILCD
• JSON LD
• SimaPro CSV (*currently only as source format of a data conversion)

If we implement one of those format we should be able to provides all the main data format thought such converter.

Additional context

• https://helpdesk.lifecycleinitiative.org/distribution/data-formats/
• https://github.com/GreenDelta/olca-schema - https://greendelta.github.io/olca-schema/
• https://www.greendelta.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/LCA_XV_JSON-LD_final.pdf