Linked LCA Commons
vocab — Linked LCA Commons
dcterms:license- https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
dcterms:title- Terms coined by linked-lcacommons @en
rdf:type- owl:Ontology
rdfs:comment- Coined only where schema.org, DCMI Terms, PROV-O, QUDT 2.1,
SKOS, DCAT, ORG and FOAF do not cover the notion. Life-cycle inventory has no
widely deployed published vocabulary with stable term IRIs — olca-schema is
JSON-first and its files ship with a null @context, and the Eclipse Tractus-X
digital-product-passport aspect models are SAMM/JSON-Schema-first with nothing
to link to. So the alternative to coining here was not reuse; it was silence.
Every term below carries a comment saying what it means and, where the reason is
not obvious, why it exists at all. @en
rdf:type- owl:Class
rdfs:comment- One flow into or out of a process, with its amount and unit.
Addressable rather than a blank node, and identified by upstream's own
internalId rather than by its position in the array. A figure that cannot be
cited cannot be argued with, and array positions are not stable identifiers —
the sibling wrapper over ILCD learned the second point the hard way. @en
rdfs:label- exchange @en
rdf:type- owl:Class
rdfs:comment- A substance, product or service that moves between processes
or across the system boundary. A flow of type PRODUCT_FLOW is additionally typed
schema:Product; an elementary flow crossing the boundary to nature is not, since
carbon dioxide released to air is not a product of anything. @en
rdfs:label- flow @en
rdf:type- owl:Class
rdfs:comment- An aggregated life-cycle inventory result rather than a single
production step: the inputs have already been rolled up, so its exchanges are
not a bill of materials. 26 of USLCI's 962 processes are these. Typed apart from
a unit process deliberately — reading the two alike would let an aggregate be
double-counted into a supply chain that also contains its parts. @en
rdfs:label- LCI result @en
rdfs:subClassOf- prov:Activity
rdf:type- owl:Class
rdfs:comment- A single production step with its real material and energy
inputs, as opposed to an aggregated result. 936 of USLCI's 962 processes are
these, and they are what makes the supply graph traversable: a unit process
names what it consumes, and often names the process supplying it.
Contrast an ÖKOBAUDAT declaration, which carries exactly one non-indicator
exchange — the product itself — and therefore has no inputs to trace. @en
rdfs:label- unit process @en
rdfs:subClassOf- prov:Activity
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- How much, in the unit given by qudt:unit or, where QUDT has no
term for it, by lca:unitName. Always read the unit: the same field carries
kilograms, becquerels, tonne-kilometres and US dollars. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- amount @en
rdfs:range- xsd:double
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- What the inventory covers and, more usefully, what it omits. @en
rdfs:label- completeness @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Upstream's isCopyrightProtected, as stated by the submitting
organisation. MEASURED: true on 31 of USLCI's 962 processes. It is the
submitter's assertion and not a legal determination. @en
rdfs:label- copyright protected @en
rdfs:range- xsd:boolean
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- How the data were gathered — survey, meter, literature. @en
rdfs:label- data collection @en
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- Who wrote the record up. Frequently the same party as the generator. @en
rdfs:label- data documentor @en
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- Who produced the inventory. Often a named individual rather
than an organisation: 42 of USLCI's 67 actors are people. @en
rdfs:label- data generator @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Records where upstream's own data is malformed, conflated or
absent, so that a consumer sees the defect instead of silently inheriting it.
Describes the DOCUMENT or the specific node it hangs on, never the entity: a
process is not low quality because its record has a problem. @en
rdfs:label- data quality note @en
rdfs:range- xsd:string
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Which data were chosen and on what grounds. @en
rdfs:label- data selection @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- How raw measurements were adjusted, scaled or extrapolated. @en
rdfs:label- data treatment @en
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- From a process to one of the flows it consumes or produces. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#UnitProcess
rdfs:label- exchange @en
rdfs:range- vocab#Exchange
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- The substance, product or service this exchange moves. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- flow @en
rdfs:range- vocab#Flow
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- The measurable property the amount is expressed in — mass,
volume, energy, goods transport. It is what makes "0.0013 t*km" of a transport
service commensurable with anything else. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- flow property @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Upstream's enumeration: PRODUCT_FLOW, ELEMENTARY_FLOW or
WASTE_FLOW. The distinction is what separates a system's internal economy from
its exchanges with the environment. @en
rdfs:label- flow type @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Where the process is representative of, beyond the coded location. @en
rdfs:label- geography description @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- What the author intended the dataset to be used for. @en
rdfs:label- intended application @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Upstream's own identifier for an exchange within its process.
Stable within a record and NOT a position in the exchanges array. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- internal id @en
rdfs:range- xsd:integer
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- How the inventory was compiled — allocation, cut-off, system boundary. @en
rdfs:label- inventory method @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Marks an output that displaces production elsewhere rather
than being produced. It enters a calculation with the opposite sign, so treating
it as an ordinary output inverts part of the result. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- is avoided product @en
rdfs:range- xsd:boolean
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- True when the process consumes this flow, false when it produces it. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- is input @en
rdfs:range- xsd:boolean
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Marks the one exchange the process is scaled to — upstream's
isQuantitativeReference. Every other amount is per unit of this one, so a figure
read without it means nothing. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- is reference flow @en
rdfs:range- xsd:boolean
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Constants and assumptions fixed in the model. @en
rdfs:label- modeling constants @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Upstream's own enumeration string, UNIT_PROCESS or LCI_RESULT. @en
rdfs:label- process type @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- The project the dataset was produced under, and who funded it. @en
rdfs:label- project description @en
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- The Commons repository a record belongs to. The Commons is a
federation of 27 publishers rather than one database, and a UUID is unique only
within a repository — which is why every dataset path carries one. @en
rdfs:label- repository @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- Carried by a document whose upstream record states no terms of
use at all — 45 of the 1 733 packaged processes.
Deliberately NOT a dcterms:license. Asserting a grant nobody made would be worse
than admitting there is none, and "US federal work, therefore public domain" is
an inference this wrapper is not entitled to draw: the Commons aggregates
submissions from universities and industry as well as agencies.
Also carried by listings the wrapper builds itself, which have no terms of their
own and whose members do not share one set. @en
rdfs:label- rights unstated @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- How many sites or units were sampled, and how representative they are. @en
rdfs:label- sampling @en
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- From an input exchange to the process upstream names as
supplying it — olca's defaultProvider.
THE EDGE THIS WRAPPER EXISTS FOR. It makes a life-cycle inventory a traversable
graph rather than a table of figures: from a composite part, to the styrene it
consumes, to the process that makes the styrene. There are 3 730 of these across
the packaged corpus, and 358 of them cross from USLCI into the electricity
baseline, which is why the two are packaged together.
The ÖKOBAUDAT wrapper has no counterpart and cannot: an EN 15804 declaration
records "which process step is this product used in" as a permanent
non-goal. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- supplied by @en
rdfs:range- vocab#UnitProcess
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- The supplying process's name, carried inline so a supply chain
is readable one hop at a time without dereferencing every supplier. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- supplied by (label) @en
rdfs:range- xsd:string
rdf:type- owl:ObjectProperty
rdfs:comment- From a process to the processes that consume its output.
NOT IN THE UPSTREAM DATA. olca records a supply relationship only on the
consumer, so this direction is built by indexing the whole corpus at startup.
Without it "what is this product used in" has no answer and the supply graph is
a one-way street.
It is the inverse of lca:suppliedBy in meaning but is NOT declared owl:inverseOf
it, because the domains differ: suppliedBy runs from an EXCHANGE and suppliesTo
from a PROCESS. An exchange identifies which input is supplied, which the
process-to-process edge necessarily loses. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#UnitProcess
rdfs:label- supplies to @en
rdfs:range- vocab#UnitProcess
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- The technology the process represents, in the author's own words. @en
rdfs:label- technology description @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- What period the data represents, beyond the validity interval. @en
rdfs:label- time description @en
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- The unit as upstream spells it, e.g. "t*km" or "Item(s)".
Always present, because qudt:unit is not always possible. QUDT 2.1 defines no
transport-work unit (tonne-kilometre, person-kilometre, tonne-mile), no
area-time or volume-time unit, and no currencies — seven of the 26 units in this
corpus, covering 1 320 exchanges. This wrapper does not mint a plausible-looking
qudt: IRI for those: a dangling link into someone else's namespace looks
resolvable, which makes it worse than an admitted gap. @en
rdfs:domain- vocab#Exchange
rdfs:label- unit name @en
rdfs:range- xsd:string
rdf:type- owl:DatatypeProperty
rdfs:comment- The author's advice on using the dataset, including its limits. @en
rdfs:label- use advice @en