Life cycle inventory database BAFU

Automated access to the data of the life cycle inventory database BAFU, developed by the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The data product exposes impact factors for each process of the database, for the following impact assessment methods: IPCC 2021, Ecological Scarcity 2021 and EF 3.1.

More information on the life cycle inventory database BAFU is available under Life cycle assessment.

Ordering and pagination

Results are returned in no particular order, and a single query is limited to 10 000 rows. Queries that exceed the limit are rejected, not truncated. Larger extracts are retrieved by splitting the request into smaller filter windows — for example by impactMethod and impactCategory — and iterating. See Getting started → Pagination and limits for details.

Impact assessment (LCIA)

Impact factors for each process of the database. One row corresponds to one process and one impact category; the impact factor applies to one reference unit of the process and is stated in the impact category's unit.

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Available fields

Field	Type	Notes
uuid	String	Stable identifier of the process in the database. Unique across processes, but repeated on each of the process's 47 impact category rows.
processName	String	Name of the process as given in the database, in English. Not unique on its own: the same name occurs for several locations.
location	String	Geography the process represents (for example CH, RER, GLO).
referenceUnit	String	Reference unit of the process the impact factor refers to (for example kg, MJ, t*km).
impactMethod	String	IPCC 2021, Ecological Scarcity 2021 or EF 3.1. Part of the row key.
impactCategory	String	Impact category within the method (for example GWP 100, Ozone depletion). Not unique across methods.
impactCategoryUnit	String	Unit of the impact factor (for example UBP, kg CO2-eq, CTUh). Spelling follows the method that defines it.
value	Float	Impact factor in impactCategoryUnit per referenceUnit. Negative values denote an avoided burden.
isSingleScore	Boolean	Whether the impact category is a weighted and normalised aggregate of other categories of the same method.
category	String	Top level of the process classification.
categoryPath	[String]	Full classification path from the top level down. Joined with a semicolon in a CSV download.
lastDatasetUpdateYear	Int	Year the inventory dataset was last updated.
sourceStudy	String	Inventory study the process was taken from.
sourceStudyAuthor	String	First author of the source study.
description	String	Documentation of the process from the database, in the source language.

Every field except categoryPath is filterable.

Notes

• The location field follows the two-letter ISO country codes. Details and exceptions — such as region codes like RER or ENTSO-E — are described in the appendix of the data quality requirements of the life cycle inventory database BAFU.
• Impact categories and impact assessment methods are named largely as in the openLCA edition of the life cycle inventory database BAFU (see nexus.openlca.org).
• One impact category is a single score: the Ecological Scarcity total (UBP). It is flagged with isSingleScore. Summing the values of a method without excluding it double-counts.
• Four categories of the EF 3.1 method are sums of sub-categories that are also present — Climate change, Ecotoxicity freshwater, Human toxicity cancer and Human toxicity non-cancer. They are not single scores and are therefore not flagged; they have to be excluded from a sum over a method as well.
• The table holds exactly one version of the database at a time. Each delivery replaces it in full, and the API always returns the current version. Earlier versions remain available as prepared files.

Downloading the data

The impact factors are available as a prepared ZIP file for direct download, with one folder per loaded version. For targeted, filtered extracts, the GraphQL API is available.

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Contact

Questions on the content of this data product can be addressed to the FOEN — see Contact.