Open lifecycle analysis data for food
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN - Skolan för datavetenskap och kommunikation |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 295 680 |
| Project duration | October 2014 - June 2015 |
| Status | Completed |
Purpose and goal
The goal of the project was to provide an open datasource for climate- and energy-data that has been retrieved from Life Cycle Analysis of foodstuff that has been gathered in a project financed by the Swedish Energy Agency. Another goal was to develop and publish a metadata description of the datasource according to the DCAT-AP metadata standard. Both of these goals has been fulfilled and the datasource is available via a web-based API. The datasource will also be used by the city of Gothenburg (se below), which answers towards the purpose of enabling external users of the datasource.
Results and expected effects
The result from the project was an open datasource with a web-based API, where the datasource is also described according to the DCAT-AP metadata standard. We have been contacted by the city of Gothenburg since they plan to use the datasource for the planning and evaluation of their procurement of foodstuff, as a part of their climate-strategic program. Discussions are also taking place to apply for funding in the Vinnova call ´Utmaningsdriven innovation´. We have also been contacted by the Swedish Life Cycle center and CESC regarding a collaboration of a national datasource of LCA data.
Approach and implementation
The chosen approach to make the datasource publicly available was to develop a web-based API. Calls to this API result in data in XML or JSON format, which are formats that are both open and machine readable but also chosen since they are common formats in the web-environment. The information about the datasource itself was developed and published according to the DCAT-AP metadata standard. The development and implementation was carried out without any major obstacles with the chosen technical framework Symphony.