Working Group on Data Access

Core to the BONSAI idea is that both the raw data and the calculated product footprints shall be available to the general public in an intuitive and easily accessible form.

In the same way as each Wikipedia page for a chemical today has a small infobox listing its chemical properties, we intend that every Wikipedia page that describes a product shall have a little box with the product footprints – the LCA results – for the product, with links to underlying information. The extent to which this will really be integrated with the Wikipedia project or placed on separate pages, is something that still needs to be clarified within the Wikimedia project. In any case, the BONSAI organisation will separately maintain the underlying information.

Also the original unlinked unit process data (exchanges and relations per activity) could be presented in the same way, as a little box on every Wikipedia page that describes a human activity, with links to underlying information. And the summary data per exchange and impact category (global totals for the whole database and a map with geographical distribution) could be presented as a box in all “exchange- and impact-describing” Wikipedia-pages.

This Working Group is responsible for designing, testing, implementing and maintaining the presentation formats for the different data categories, in close cooperation with the Wikimedia project. Furthermore, the Working Group will cooperate with the Open Source software community to develop graphical web-tools for presentation of entire product life cycles, ensuring that even complex product systems, for example with many by-products, can be communicated to the uninitiated user.

This Working Group is expected to be composed of experts in Open Source development and graphical interfaces, members from the Wikimedia project, and with close cooperation with groups of users & developers of web-applications.