Getting Started - LCA-ActivityBrowser/activity-browser GitHub Wiki
Learn how to install Activity Browser...
First activate the environment where the activity browser is installed:
conda activate abThen simply run activity-browser and the application will open.
Activity Browser uses Brightway for its data management and calculations. Brightway has its own 'accent' of LCA terms, you can compare LCA terms from Brightway, ISO 14044 (2006) and others in the Brightway Glossary.
Data in Brightway is organized into projects
- Projects contain databases, impact categories, calculation setups and more
- Databases contain activities (biosphere and technosphere)
- Activities are the building blocks of your LCA model
- Databases contain activities (biosphere and technosphere)
- Impact categories are used to score your LCA models against
- Calculation setups are the combinations of reference flows and impact categories that you can calculate
- Projects also contain other data, such as parameters and plugin settings.
Image copied from the
Brightway documentation.
Read more about how data is organized in the Brightway documentation.
Activity Browser is organized in two panels, which themselves have tabs and a menu bar.
The left panel has a Project tab and an Impact Categories tab.
The right panel has the Welcome screen, LCA setup tab, Parameters tab and -if used- an LCA Results tab.
The Project tab shows your current project, the databases in that project and the contents of a database if it is open.
The Impact Categories tab shows all impact categories that are installed in the current project.
The LCA Setup tab allows you to define reference flows, impact categories and scenarios for calculations.
The Parameters tab allows you to manage your parameters.
The LCA Results tab shows the results of the calculations you do.
Finally, the menu bar at the top allows you to manage Activity Browser, Plugins and Project settings.
In the Project tab there is initially a button called Set up your project with default data.
Click this button to add the default data.
This adds a biosphere database which contains a number of standardized biosphere flows
and compatible impact categories.
You can choose a biosphere version, which will install a biosphere database and compatible impact categories.
Important
In case you want to install ecoinvent later, choosing a biosphere version will make your project compatible with
only the version of biosphere you install.
e.g. installing biosphere 3.6 will make your project only compatible with ecoinvent 3.6 databases.
Setting the biosphere version is permanent for a project, you cannot change this version later.
If you do not plan on using ecoinvent in this project, don't worry about this and choose the highest version.
If you have a valid ecoinvent license and login information, you can immediately set up ecoinvent in your project with all relevant and compatible data. You can then choose the database version and system model.
After adding the default data, you can create or import a database with the New and Import Database buttons.
With New you can create a completely empty database with any given name and
enter your own activity data.
Clicking 'Import' will open a new dialog that will allow you to select how you want to import data into brightway (and by extension, the Activity Browser). There are two main options: 'remote data' and 'local data':
Remote database import
We currently support 2 remote databases, Ecoinvent and Forwast:
Ecoinvent is a paid database you can install directly in Activity Browser if you have a valid ecoinvent license and login information.
Forwast is a free database you can install directly in Activity Browser.
Local database import
We support various local import methods
- Local 7z-archive of ecospold2 files
- Local directory of ecospold2 files
- Local Excel file
- Local Brightway database file
To run an LCA, you must first create a calculation setup, add at least one reference flow and one impact category to be able to calculate results.
Read more about LCA calculation setups...
Read more about LCA results...
Follow a tutorial to do your first LCA...
- Youtube tutorials
- Introduction video by ETH Zurich
- AB Discussions page
- AB scientific article
- The AB has two mailing lists, for updates and user exchange
- Brightway2
- Global Sensitiviy Analysis paper describing GSA as implemented in the AB; see also our wiki
- Modular LCA paper; documentation modular LCA
Activity Browser is a community project, we rely on you for it to be awesome.
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❓ Need help? 💬 Ask the community |
💡 Ideas to improve? 💭 Request a feature |
🔥 Something Broken? 🪲 Start a bug report |
⚙️ Want to help out? 🛠️ Learn how to contribute |
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