An official website of the United States government.

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Life Cycle Assessment Commons

Acceleration of Public Secondary Data through Federal LCA Commons Data Curation

Wednesday (9/25): 10:30am-12:00pm, Primrose B

The Federal LCA Commons is expanding to meet a growing demand for free and publicly available life cycle data to support government procurement of construction materials and broader LCA community needs. In this special session, we will provide an update on new efforts to centralize data curation for FLCAC to accelerate the availability and quality of free and public secondary life cycle data relevant to North America. Representatives from the FLCAC data curation team and federal agencies, including USDA and EPA, will present on evolving FLCAC data management topics: 

  1. data interoperability challenges and a roadmap for potential solutions,
  2. improved data submission technical assistance, including for industry via the US Life Cycle Inventory (USLCI) database, 
  3. data development plans, including how this effort ties into EPA’s label program for low embodied carbon construction materials and products, and
  4. harmonized elementary flow and life cycle impact assessment resources.

Following the presentations, attendees will be encouraged to join breakout groups based on their experiences and interest in the FLCAC. We will discuss subjects such as obstacles users face when accessing and applying data from the FLCAC, challenges in submitting data to USLCI or other FLCAC repositories, data gaps and data quality issues, and current and future FLCAC technical assistance needs.

Attendees will be encouraged to participate in one of the following breakout groups:

  • Data Providers and Data Submission:
    • Have data that you are interested in submitting to the FLCAC
    • Have submitted data to the FLCAC in the past
    • Interested in discussing barriers to submission, aggregation, etc.
  • Beginner Data Users:
    • Not familiar with the FLCAC/ Familiar with the FLCAC but novice data user
    • Interested in discussing data use cases and learning more about the FLCAC
  • Experienced Data Users:
    • Familiar with the FLCAC and commonly use data
    • Interested in discussing more complex topics (e.g., API usage, tool integration, transparency vs confidentiality)

The session organizers will use the feedback from these discussions to inform strategies for data acquisition and to update and improve FLCAC resources.