Dynamic LCA through temporal graph traversal: brightway2-temporalis¶
A library for the Brightway2 LCA calculation framework that allows for a specific kind of dynamic life cycle assessments.
Brightway2-temporalis is open source. Source code is available on bitbucket, and documentation is available on read the docs.
Brightway2-temporalis has the following abilities:
- Exchanges (technosphere inputs, and biosphere outputs) can be offset in time.
- Individual exchanges can be split into multiple time steps, creating a temporal distribution for each exchange.
- Inventory datasets can be given either relative or absolute dates and times.
- Characterization factors can vary as a function of time.
- Characterization factors can spread impact over time.
However, Brightway2-temporalis has the following limitations:
- Inventory datasets cannot change their inputs as a function of time. This limitation is necessary for the graph traversal to converge.
- Exchanges must be linear, as in normal matrix-based LCA.
See the example ipython notebook (nbviewer, html) for a real usage example.