IDEA Japanese Inventory database

The Inventory Database for Environmental Analysis (IDEA v2) is a hybrid inventory database that features both statistical and process-based data. It comprehensively covers nearly all economic activities in Japan and contains about 3800 processes that are classified based mainly on the Japan Standard Commodity Classification. IDEA v2 is distributed in SimaPro as a group of unit process datasets and provides full transparency.

The IDEA Japanese Inventory database is widely used in Japan for LCA. A subset of the database was used to determine emission factors of the National Carbon Footprint Trial Project. IDEA is a hybrid database that contains LCI datasets of non-manufacturing sectors (agriculture, forestry and fisheries, mining, construction and civil engineering) as well as manufacturing sectors (food and beverage, textile, chemical industry, ceramics and building materials, metal and machinery) and also sectors such as electricity, gas, water, sewerage, waste treatment and recycling.

The database covers all products manufactured in Japan and many Japanese services, meaning that you will usually have at least some secondary dataset to link to when using IDEA as the background LCI database for Japan. Datasets are categorized in a hierarchical structure (IDEA category and SimaPro category), and each process name contains a unique IDEA code to make search easier. The newly added land use and water flows are based on surveys and statistics which represent Japan.

Why choose IDEA Japanese Inventory database?

A comprehensive Japanese inventory database

IDEA v2 is a comprehensive inventory of nearly all economic activities of the Japanese industry. It contains about 3800 processes that are classified based mainly on the Japan Standard Commodity Classification. It covers many sectors such as: agriculture, forestry and food, chemical, rubbers and plastics, steel and non-ferrous metals, textile, electronics and machinery, transportation equipment, energy, water, waste treatment, civil engineering, retail and wholesale services.

Great variety of impact categories

With more than 180 elementary flows, IDEA v2 covers the major LCA impact categories such as global warming, acidification, ozone depletion, mineral and fossil resource depletion, water resources and land use. The database also includes the Japanese LIME2 impact assessment method; which calculates the impacts of 13 midpoint characterisation results, 4 damage assessment results and a single-score result.

IDEA v2 offers full transparency

IDEA v2 is distributed as a group of interlinked unit process datasets and provides full transparency. This SimaPro-compatible database also includes an aggregated-system-processes version as well as an Excel version of the database. IDEA v2 is provided with manuals and complete documentation of the database and all datasets included.

starting at €2000

About the developer

The IDEA database is developed and maintained by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry (JEMAI). The implementation to SimaPro was done by TCO2 Co. Ltd.