Semantic catalogs for life cycle assessment data

Krzysztof Janowicz,Christopher B. Davis,Brandon Kuczenski,Beatriz Rivela

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.07.216

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a highly interdisciplinary field that requires knowledge from different domains to be gathered and interpreted together. Although there are relatively few major data sources for LCA, the data themselves are presented with highly heterogeneous formats, interfaces, and distribution mechanisms. The lack of agreement among data providers for descriptions of processes and flows creates substantial barriers for information sharing and reuse of practitioners’ models.Nevertheless, the many data resources share a common logic. The use of Semantic Web technologies and text mining techniques can facilitate the interpretation of data from diverse sources. Numerous existing efforts have been made to articulate a knowledge model for LCA. In March of 2015 a joint workshop was held that brought together leading international domain experts with ontology engineers to develop a set of simple models called ontology design patterns (ODPs) for LCA information. In this paper we build on the outcomes of the workshop, as well as prior published works, to derive a minimal “consensus model” for LCA. We use the consensus model to derive a description of an LCA “catalog” that can be used to express the semantic content of a data resource. We generate catalogs of several prominent databases, and make those catalogs available to the public for independent use. Finally, we “link” those catalogs to existing knowledge models using JSON-LD, a linked data format that can expose the catalog contents to Semantic Web tools.We then show by example how the catalogs may be used to answer questions about the scope, coverage, and comparability of data, both within and across data sources, that are difficult to answer when the contents of the catalogs are provided independently and inconsistently. We discuss how the use of semantic catalogs can help address challenges that initiatives such as the “Global Network of Interoperable LCA Databases – Global LCA Data Access” are facing today.

Highlights

The second requirement is met by specifying the relationships between entities according to a formal representation of knowledge known as an ontology
To evaluate the utility of the consensus model as a framework for knowledge organization, we developed software to analyze four prominent life cycle inventory databases and express them as catalogs of the format discussed above
The catalogs described in this article are text documents written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a plain-text format that can be read by both humans and computers

Summary

Introduction

Achieving sustainable production and consumption requires coordinated efforts across disciplinary boundaries from public agencies, industry actors and researchers around the world. The Millennium Development Goals of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development have been formally superseded by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their related 169. All the components of sustainability are required to be implemented, posing an unprecedented challenge to policy makers and scientists. It is evident that scientific, quantitative sustainability assessments are the key to monitoring the progress of and support the decisions on the 17 SDGs (Hak et al, 2016). Despite scientific progress in individual disciplines, it remains difficult to synthesize the efforts of multiple groups to meet global challenges, such as combating climate change while ensuring energy access for all (Cucurachi and Suh, 2015)

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