Working Group on Input-Output Framework

The Input-Output framework provides a solid foundation for the database and ensures its completeness in terms of human activities, interactions with the physical, social and economic environment, and geographical coverage. It is based on national or regional statistical data on the intermediate goods and services that are exchanged among industries (Input-Output data), measured in physical and/or monetary units. The strength of the Input-Output framework is not only its potential multi-dimensional completeness, but also the consistency checks that are made possible by this completeness.

This Working Group has the task to develop and maintain procedures to ensure that the best possible Input-Output data are available as a basis for the BONSAI database. This includes procedures for automatic data harvest and consistency checks of the data from national and regional statistical offices and other public sources of Input-Output data, in order to maintain a continuously updated data source for producing global multi-regional trade-linked Input-Output models.

Initially, the best available global Input-Output data from existing open sources will be applied and modified using standardised procedures, like those published by the ecoinvent IO repository. This includes the use of mass and carbon content properties and balances and modelling of indirect land use. To make the foundation for the BONSAI database ready as quickly as possible, household activities will initially only be included at the minimum necessary level of detail.

The Working Group is furthermore responsible for specifying procedures for integration of the Input-Output framework with other more process-specific data sources (hybridisation), initially at the global level and later at the regional/national level. The Working Group is also responsible for the design of tools for aggregated presentation of the Input-Output data and model results (per industry, per country, per environmental impact category).

The Working Group is composed of experts from the GTAP, the EXIOBASE project, the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Studies, and EU-JRC, among others.

Files from the working group

Minutes of first meeting (2015-09-24, PDF)