Ecoinvent

The Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories initiated the project 'ecoinvent 2000' with the objective to provide a comprehensive database of harmonised, quality-checked life cycle inventory (LCI) datasets for materials and processes. ifu Hamburg GmbH was comissioned to develop the database and the required software tools. The database is accessible on the Internet for subscribers.

Main components of this software solution are a central database server, an administration tool 'EcoAdmin', the internet portal with search engine 'EcoQuery', the highly efficient calculation routines 'EcoCalc' and the 'EcoEditor' tool for shared access to the database. ifu Hamburg also hosts and maintains the ecoinvent servers.

A central element of this project was the development of the industrial standard 'EcoSpold' for life cycle inventory datasets. It allows the exchange of LCA data in an common format between various commercial LCA software tools and is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology.

For further info please visit www.ecoinvent.ch