FAQ

Please give a number to each question to facilitate its identification and follow the format below

1 What is the purpose of an ontology and why do we need it?

There are two views on this - 1) standardizing on the terms that people use and 2) creating a data structure that meets the data retrieval use cases that people have (i.e. what are the linkages we want to make between different types of data?)

2 How different will BONSAI be from ecoinvent and LCI databases? and how different will it be from product footprint calculators available on the net?

Main difference is the open data. The combination of completeness with detail will also be unique. Having nice low-barrier interfaces is required to stimulate data supply and increase usage. The modular approach to software design is also a unique feature enabled by the open data approach.

3 How can public editing (wiki-data principles) work together with balancing, consistency and consolidation algorithms?

-> All balances do not have to be complete in order to get sensible reults: Thus allow data entry without editing (but with validation/plausibility check) and store mis-balances as a work item

• If a user wants to make a change and see how that changes the overall results: This is not a standard BONSAI deliverable. Expert users can download BONSAI as a background database, and use that for experimentation.
• Data added to Wikipedia is about general knowledge whereas data added to BONSAI needs to be integrated within an IO-framework; so there are more validation requirements.