What does an ordinary dataset look like?
Every dataset represents one activity (for example "kiwi production" is a transforming activity that represents the production of kiwi).
What a dataset consists of
- at least one reference product (such as "kiwi")
- meta data (description and documentation of the dataset, including a description of sources and the modelling approach to create the dataset)
- a list of all relevant intermediate exchanges, "from" and "to" the Technosphere (such as input of "electricity, low voltage", "fertilizer" or a by-product of "bio waste")
- a list of all relevant elementary exchanges, "from" and "to" the Environment (such as "carbon dioxide" emissions to air and other emissions, land occupation and transformation, extraction of resources)
Additional Information
Additional, more detailed information is available in the dataset itself (such as properties of the exchanges, parameters, mathematical formulas, uncertainty information, etc.). Based on these datasets, aggregated system inventories and LCIA results are calculated.
For more information on the terminology it is worth having a look at our glossary.
Why do I need the ecoinvent database when doing a Life Cycle Assessment?
How can I use the ecoinvent database?
What can I do if I have problems accessing ecoinvent online?
What is the difference between SimaPro or GaBi, Umberto, openLCA, etc. and ecoinvent?
What is the structure of the data that ecoinvent offers?
Where do the data in the ecoinvent database come from?
Why are system models named differently in my software?
What are confidential datasets?
Why have the LCIA results of a product changes between versions?