How can a dynamic Life cycle inventory data repository learn from open data approaches in other fields?

Poster (konferens), 2015

Davis et al. (2010) have tried to answer the research question: “how can the IE community use the web to its full potential in order to facilitate its research?” as information/ knowledge of IE dispersed among different communities. In particular, the tedious process of how researchers conduct Life cycle Inventory and further analysis is depicted. In 2007, WikiPathways (http://www.wikipathways.org/) was established to facilitate the contribution and maintenance of pathway information by the biology community. Inspired by such examples, we propose a dynamic life cycle inventory repository, which is defined here as a comprehensive knowledge base on a particular domain, where the collecting, accumulating, tagging, commenting and tracking of all the evolving documents into the emerging repository are continuously moderated by contributors collectively. The repository is open to all LCA practitioners to actively contribute to and benefit from the researches they have conducted. It is thus interesting to discuss how this repository will look like. What impact will such a knowledge infrastructure have on the IE community? What is the functional requirement for designing such a dynamic repository? What kinds of modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be adopted, given the aforementioned problems? In order to engineer a dynamic LCA repository, other scientific fields that have similar approaches to open data, open publication and data repository merit investigation. The first step would be to conduct a literature survey and research into the open data practices in relevant fields. It is expected that best practices and functional requirements for building this repository can be derived. We hope this effort can initiate research into an open and collaborative LCA data platform and it also corresponds with the current trend of open LCA, LCI database Interoperability and fusion of conflicting information (Suh et al. 2013; Ciroth 2007; Gavankar & Suh 2014). Reference: Ciroth, A., 2007. ICT for environment in life cycle applications openLCA—A new open source software for life cycle assessment. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 12(4), pp.209–210. Davis, C., Nikolic, I. & Dijkema, G.P.J., 2010. Industrial Ecology 2.0. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 14(5), pp.707–726. Gavankar, S. & Suh, S., 2014. Fusion of conflicting information for improving representativeness of data used in LCAs. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 19(3), pp.480–490. Suh, S. et al., 2013. Interoperability between ecoinvent ver. 3 and US LCI database: a case study. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, (Lci).