This repository is a openly-developed and openly-available mapping of the elementary flow lists of ecoinvent 3.7 and SimaPro 9.4.
Translating across nomenclature lists is an eternal problem in many problem domains, including life cycle assessment. There have been many ad hoc mapping files and file formats over the years, but recently a large working group produced the GLAD Elementary Flow Resources repository; we will use its data formats for both input files and flow mappings:
Our objective is to improve on the UNEP workflow by making the process of creating the mappings transparent and open to any one who wants to contribute. In addition to other benefits, this should also make future updates easier.
Current status is reported in status.md
To the best of our understanding, the elementary flow list provided by PRé uses a different model for the Context value than what is used in ecoinvent. For one thing, they have one UUID for flows, regardless of the subcategory Context values. Indeed, the master data list includes only the base Category values, namely:
- 'Airborne emissions'
- 'Economic issues'
- 'Emissions to soil'
- 'Final waste flows'
- 'Non material emissions'
- 'Raw materials'
- 'Social issues'
- 'Waterborne emissions'
They also use slightly different names for these base Context values, e.g. for Airborne emissions:
- In the master flow list: Airborne emissions
- In an LCI file: Emissions to air
- In an LCIA file: Air
We use the LCI file version, as this is the most common use case for data conversion. These are (again, to the best of our knowledge):
- Emissions to air
- Economic issues
- Emissions to soil
- Final waste flows
- Non material emissions
- Resources
- Social issues
- Emissions to water
Here is our current mapping for different base Context values
| ecoinvent context | Simapro context | Match condition (Simapro to ecoinvent) |
|---|---|---|
| natural resource/land | Resources/land | = |
| natural resource/unspecified | Resources/(unspecified) | = |
| natural resource/biotic | Resources/biotic | = |
| natural resource/in ground | Resources/in ground | = |
| natural resource/in air | Resources/in air | = |
| natural resource/in water | Resources/in water | = |
| natural resource/in water | Resources/fossil well | ~ |
| ecoinvent context | Simapro context | Match condition (Simapro to ecoinvent) |
|---|---|---|
| water/fossil well | Emissions to water/fossilwater | ~ |
| water/ground- | Emissions to water/groundwater | = |
| water/ground-, long-term | Emissions to water/groundwater, long-term | = |
| water/ocean | Emissions to water/ocean | = |
| water/surface water | Emissions to water/lake | < |
| water/surface water | Emissions to water/river | < |
| water/surface water | Emissions to water/river, long-term | < |
| water/unspecified | Emissions to water/(unspecified) | = |
| ecoinvent context | Simapro context | Match condition (Simapro to ecoinvent) |
|---|---|---|
| air/indoor | Emissions to air/indoor | = |
| air/low population density, long-term | Emissions to air/low. pop., long-term | = |
| air/lower stratosphere + upper troposphere | Emissions to air/stratosphere | ~ |
| air/lower stratosphere + upper troposphere | Emissions to air/stratosphere + troposphere | ~ |
| air/non-urban air or from high stacks | Emissions to air/low. pop. | = |
| air/unspecified | Emissions to air/(unspecified) | = |
| air/urban air close to ground | Emissions to air/high. pop. | = |
| ecoinvent context | Simapro context | Match condition (Simapro to ecoinvent) |
|---|---|---|
| soil/agricultural | Emissions to soil/agricultural | = |
| soil/forestry | Emissions to soil/forestry | = |
| soil/industrial | Emissions to soil/industrial | = |
| soil/industrial | Emissions to soil/urban, non industrial | ~ |
| soil/unspecified | Emissions to soil/(unspecified) | = |
Your contributions are welcome! This effort, and indeed consistent, high-quality LCA results, are only possible when we work together.
You will need a Github account.
We follow the Github Flow, a workflow based around pull requests, and use Github actions to do quality assurance. The Github flow documentation covers the basics; to make a contribution here you will need to: So, if you want to contribute you need to:
- Write some code to create CSVs following the Output flow mapping format. You can also do mappings manually, though we would prefer you to automate this as much as possible, so that we can easily change or regenerate the mappings if needed. The repo includes a template for doing matching, and the folder
Notebooksincludes matching notebooks that have been incorporated into the current data. - However you generate it, you must create a CSV with new mappings in the
Contributedirectory. - Create a pull request, using the
new_mappingtemplate. Make sure you have done the tasks given in the template; you can always update your pull request with new commits! A contributor forks this repository and adds their mapping contribution as a new CSV file in theContributedirectory. Ideally these contributions will be generated programmatically, either via a Jupyter Notebook (added toNotebooks) or a script (added toScripts). - They create a pull request, which triggers Github Actions which check the validity of their mapping file, and checks whether the new mappings contradict existing mappings. If there are errors, an error log is created and attached to the pull request.
- If the pull request is accepted, a separate set of Github Actions are run which merge the new mappings into
Mapping/Output/Mapped_files, and updates theREADME.mdfile and status reports.