Data Format of Meta-Processes

Meta-Processes can be specified in the format shown below. It is used to define and store meta-processes. All other properties are calculated based on this data, e.g. scaling of edges, LCA results, etc. using the methods of the MetaProcess class.

data_format = {
        'name': "custom_name",
        'outputs': [
            (key, 'custom_name', 'custom_amount'),
        ],
        'chain': [
            (key),
        ],
        'cuts': [
            (parent_key, child_key, 'custom_name', amount),
        ],
        'output_based_scaling': True,
}

Notes:

Keys: Keys are a tuple composed of two elements, where the first refers to the database and the second to the activity, thus (‘database name’, ‘meta-process name or uuid’)

Output-based scaling: The default value is True. If set to False, the scaling activities will be scaled to 1.0 no matter how the product outputs are defined by the user.This can be used to a) to create artificial outputs that are not part of the original dataset (the user needs to see whether that makes sense) b) when ecoinvent 2.2 multi-output activities, as imported in brightway2, are used, as these don’t include the output products, which need to be manually defined.