Towards Understanding Foreign Inventory Databases

Abstract

While there are high-quality domestic inventory databases in Japan, demand for overseas inventory databases is increasing along with the progress of various LCA-related standardization efforts, especially in Europe and the United States. The main classification axes for understanding the differences and characteristics of overseas inventory databases are “target industry and granularity,” “boundary,” “types of datasets provided,” “processes linkage,” “format and software support,” “impact area and impact assessment method support,” “compliance with standards,” “frequency of updates,” and “included dataset quality.”

Generally, multiple LCA software has integrated multiple inventory databases and impact assessment methods to perform calculations for various combinations, and it is common to use this software to access overseas inventory databases. Each inventory database has been developed over a long time, using different raw data and responding to different backgrounds and objectives, making it difficult to establish consistency and interoperability between the databases. Although there are activities aimed at improving interoperability among inventory databases in international cooperation, such as GLAD, establishing full interoperability is assumed to take longer.