Initial commit

Draft plan for metadata exchange.md

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+# Draft plan for metadata exchange
+
+## Brightway Excel LCI format
+
+In general, this needs a more formal specification.
+
+The column labels are fixed by the labels used by Brightway.
+
+### Required attributes for metadata file
+
+* Version
+* License
+* Author
+* Dependencies
+* URI
+
+* List of strategies (plus libraries with strategies? Notebooks/python files?)
+
+### Optional attributes for metadata file
+
+* Brightway library versions
+* Other optional libraries
+
+### Dependencies & Storage
+
+Brightway can offer storage services for easy download through support from Départ de Sentier, but having something like Zenodo would be preferable.
+
+*Question*: Do we need a "lite" storage to see if data is already present (to avoid unnecessary downloads)?
+
+*Question*: Do we need to invent a unique identifier for LCI databases? Or make up a URI scheme? Is Zenodo download link a good URI?
+
+*Question*: How to handle links to proprietary dependencies?
+
+*Question*: Security of external strategies. Maybe have one "blessed" repo with external strategies?
+
+*Question*: Can we issue DOIs for data? Free versus paid?
+
+*Question*: Do we need "known good result" tests?
+
+### Brightway capabilities needed
+
+Add functionality to import this data, and to download dependent databases
+
+## AB Superstructure scenario format
+
+### Headers
+
+Headers are a mix of fixed values and scenario labels.
+
+**Proposal**: Fix these values and number of columns as currently used.
+
+Scenario labels don't seem to have a naming convention. That's probably fine? But the metadata needs to have more information.
+
+### Required attributes for metadata file
+
+* Version
+* License
+* Author
+* Dependencies
+* URI
+
+I don't think we need custom strategies?
+
+### Storage
+
+Same questions apply. In general, these files are larger, but not necessarily large. Chris will clarify if his institution can provide hosting - it would be good to have mirrors at other institutions.

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+# Prospective Database Management
+
+This repo is for planning a community based approach to sharing prospective LCI databases, generation scripts, metadata, and other artifacts necessary to do prospective LCA, especially when using the Brightway LCA framework.