Brightway Regional

Brightway Regional is a specialized package of the Brightway Software Framework

Basics

bw2regional is a separate library that extends the Brightway LCA framework to do regionalized LCA calculations.

image

It is easy to do regionalized LCA incorrectly. This package tries to make it at least a bit easier to do regionalization correctly, for at least some definitions of correct.

bw2regional supports the following regionalization calculations:

  1. Inventory database and impact assessment method share the same spatial scale (one-scale{.interpreted-text role=”ref”})

  2. Inventory and impact assessment have different spatial scales (two-scales{.interpreted-text role=”ref”})

  3. Inventory and impact assessment have different spatial scales, with background loading used for spatial allocation (two-scales-with-loading{.interpreted-text role=”ref”})

  4. Inventory and impact assessment have different spatial scales, with extension tables used as a third spatial scale to allocate impact assessment units to inventory units.

In addition to making regionalized LCA calculations, maps of regionalized impact can be exported from methods 2-4.

Each separate spatial scale is stored as a geocollection. The relationships between spatial scales (i.e. how much area of unit a in spatial scale 1 intersects unit b in spatial scale 2) is stored as an Intersection. Areal intersection calculations are done using the separate utility pandarus, a library for matching spatial data sets and calculating their mutual intersected areas. Impact assessment methods store characterization factors per biosphere flow and spatial unit. Each organization unit is described in more detail below.

bw2regional is part of a family of software libraries - see libraries{.interpreted-text role=”ref”} for more information.