The Industrial Ecology Data Commons (IEDC) is a relational database designed as an open “platform to exchange industrial ecology datasets” (Pauliuk et al., forthcoming). It is positioned as an implementation of the ‘general data model (GDM) for socioeconomic metabolism’, which the authors state “can be used to structure all data that can be located in the industrial system”. To evaluate the representative capabilities of the GDM and IEDC, a source dataset of unit-processes is mapped to their datamodel. The source data selected for this purpose is a version of the ecoinvent database, which has been transformed into the minimum consensus knowledge model for LCA data (Kuczenski et al. 2016).
Three primary insights have been found through this research. Firstly, it is possible to represent unit-process data within the IEDC. However, there are numerous shortcomings, which lead to the evaluation that this representation is not effective. Second, it was found that the GDM is probably not described sufficiently clearly and explicitly to allow for the development of alternative interoperable implementations, using technologies other than those used within the IEDC. Finally, the IEDC acts simultaneously as both a datamodel repository, and a database for storing the data which conforms to those models; a design pattern which permits the actual data modelling process to be deferred to the data-loading phase. Relational databases function best when their datamodel (and hence structure) is determined before the loading of data. As such, this report recommends that further work is required to satisfy the full design requirements of an effective platform for IE dataset exchange.