Attention

HELP WANTED
You can help update and improve the content on this page.
Please start by reading the guide to contributing to the Brightway documentation.

Terminology#

LCA is performed and discussed in many different places. Because it is used so widely, different dialects of terminology exists. Below, we list different terms used by Brightway, the ISO 14044 standard and the proposed “LCA Core Ontology for the Semantic Web” by Ghose et al. (2021).

Brightway	ISO	Ghose et al.	Description
Inventory
`activity`	`(unit) process` `elementary flow`[1]	`Activity`	An `activity` in Brightway is the name used for both processes and elementary flows.
`production exchange`	`product`[2]	`DeterminingFlow`	This is what is produced or supplied by the `activity` (e.g. manufacturing of a product, provisioning of waste treatment services, etc.).
`technosphere exchange`	`intermediate flow`	`Flow`	An exchange between two technosphere `activities`.
`biosphere exchange`	`elementary flow`	`Flow`	An exchange between a biosphere `activity` and a technosphere `activity`
Impact assessment
`characterization factor`	`characterization factor`		A biosphere `exchange` characterized (scaled) to a unit.
`method`	`impact category`		A set of `characterization factors`.
Calculation
`LCA`	`LCI`		Life Cycle Inventory
`LCIA`	`LCIA`		Life Cycle Impact Assessment
`demand`	`functional unit`	`ReferenceUnit`	The demand from the system to calculate for (e.g. “one kilogram of steel”, etc.).