Chris,
Yes, I agree to coordinate this working group. I will do a turn on this hopefully before you all get started Wednesday morning. I will add a group description to the README and will create a new repo and add Carlos, Massimo, and Miguel as contributors. I will also consider a possible agenda for a kickoff call.

-Brandon

Massimo: it seems your BEP is not publicly viewable. (i get 404: https://github.com/massimopizzol/enhancements/blob/master/beps/0003-bep-ontology.md )
I will save my not-so-humble-opinions for the BEP.
-Brandon

Dear Brandon, Carlos, Massimo, Miguel: 

I think we have a good foundation on which to make specific technical recommendations during the hackathon. Brandon, would you agree to be the coordinator for this working group? If so, please put in a basic group description as requested in https://bonsai.groups.io/g/hackathon2019/message/105. I think you can use your best judgment as to the deliverable, we can always change this later if need be.

If you think it would be useful, we can schedule a videoconference this/next week to discuss. If so, please set the agenda.

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 16:23, <michele.derosa@...> wrote:

The following #BEP0001 is a discussion on the BEP-0001 BONSAI (BEP) Enhancement Proposal Template.

Thanks to the authors for the initiative. To brake the ice, I propose that a default time for discussion is set and mentioned in the template. A default time could be 3 weeks from the publication of the BEP.

The editor could modify (extend or shorten) the time depending on specific needs or the activity and liveliness of the discussion.

Thanks Michele for assuming editorship!

I think that guidelines on using the template should be put in
#BEP0002; this discussion should be limited to the template itself,
i.e. what sections are included/excluded, what is optional/required,
etc.

I would also like to read in the template a short description for the procedure to actually implement/reject modifications to the proposals (such as the one above, as an example).

An excellent question - my though tis that most BEPs will be the
result of working groups, and so will already reflect some level of
consensus, and will normally have a history of how the specifics came
to be. That doesn't mean the community can't question the proposal,
though!

One option would be that the authors have to agree to any suggested
changes. In the end, the proposal has to be agreed by the broader
community, so it is in the interest of the authors to agree to
reasonable change requests - otherwise the proposal won't survive a
vote.

Another option would be that anyone can suggest a change (via pull
request, not a half-baked idea via email) and we could all vote on it.
But I fear that this could lead to vote overload. In my opinion, fewer
votes would mean that people pay more attention when they come up.

I would also say that the editors should never take the role of a
judge of whether a suggested change should be implemented or not - it
isn't their role to take potentially controversial decisions.

Michele

--
############################
Chris Mutel
Technology Assessment Group, LEA
Paul Scherrer Institut
OHSA D22
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
http://chris.mutel.org
Telefon: +41 56 310 5787
############################

The following #BEP0001 is a discussion on the BEP-0001 BONSAI (BEP) Enhancement Proposal Template. 

Thanks to the authors for the initiative. To brake the ice, I propose that a default time for discussion is set and mentioned in the template. A default time could be 3 weeks from the publication of the BEP. 

The editor could modify (extend or shorten) the time depending on specific needs or the activity and liveliness of the discussion.

I would also like to read in the template a short description for the procedure to actually implement/reject modifications to the proposals (such as the one above, as an example). 

Michele

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 12:57, Bo Weidema <bo.weidema@...> wrote:

Dear Chris,

Yes, of course in principle you can store the GDP/person of a country
over a time interval (e.g. from World Bank) in the database :

- Activity: All economic activities (defined as those that have monetary
labour costs, net taxes and/or net operating surplus)

- Flow-object: Value added (= labour costs, net taxes and net operating
surplus)

- Flow-property: Monetary value

- Property-relation: Person

but normally we would calculate that by summing the value added over all
activities in the database for that country in that time period and
dividing by the population, which is why I said it was a query output.
But you are right that you could use this calculated value to compare
with that of the World Bank.

And likewise for the CO2 emission / country:

- Activity: All

- Flow-object: carbon dioxide

And likewise the recycling rate for a material of a country could be
stored as the output of the national market for that material for
recycling with a property-relation to the output of the market for the
material (virgin + recycled).

Also in these cases, the external "raw" value can be compared to the
calculated from the more specific data in the database. But behind these
"raw" data from e.g. World Bank, there are of course other databases
that have summed over other specific data...

Thanks Bo, this was really helpful for me (and hopefully for others) -
it shows the power of what you have developed over the last years, and
really helps me understand it on a more fundamental level.

It seems to me like this should be one of the examples included in the
initial proposal, as it shows the comprehensiveness of the system, as
well as how it can handle different scopes (not just space and time).

Best regards

Bo

--
############################
Chris Mutel
Technology Assessment Group, LEA
Paul Scherrer Institut
OHSA D22
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
http://chris.mutel.org
Telefon: +41 56 310 5787
############################

Dear Chris,

Yes, of course in principle you can store the GDP/person of a country over a time interval (e.g. from World Bank) in the database :

- Activity: All economic activities (defined as those that have monetary labour costs, net taxes and/or net operating surplus)

- Flow-object: Value added (= labour costs, net taxes and net operating surplus)

- Flow-property: Monetary value

- Property-relation: Person

but normally we would calculate that by summing the value added over all activities in the database for that country in that time period and dividing by the population, which is why I said it was a query output. But you are right that you could use this calculated value to compare with that of the World Bank.

And likewise for the CO2 emission / country:

- Activity: All

- Flow-object: carbon dioxide

And likewise the recycling rate for a material of a country could be stored as the output of the national market for that material for recycling with a property-relation to the output of the market for the material (virgin + recycled).

Also in these cases, the external "raw" value can be compared to the calculated from the more specific data in the database. But behind these "raw" data from e.g. World Bank, there are of course other databases that have summed over other specific data...

Best regards

Bo

Dear all-

The hackathon starts in less than two weeks, and in order for it to be successful we will need to be well coordinated. A few working groups have made some real progress, but I don't see any forward movement on most of the others. Please already start thinking and discussing how the skills of the different team members can fit together, how each team member can have agency, and how team management can include remote participants.

To be more specific: By Friday, March 15, please add your group to the hackathon readme, with a brief description of what to expect before and during the hackathon. Ideally there would also be a Github repo, project management, etc. as well.  

Stefano and Rutger, I don't see your responses to the working group poll.

Miguel R, there has been substantial discussion on the BONSAI ontology - we would love to get your inputs!

-Chris

--

1. The final proposal should include not just what you have found
consensus on, but also the alternatives you have considered, and why
they were not chosen. This has two purposes: to stop people from
bringing up the same issues over and over again, and to communicate
that you made informed decisions.

So, for example, when we debate over the modelling of waste treatment,
we should be drawing simple models of each possibility, and then
discussing the practical effects of these models. I don't think it is
sufficient (certainly not in the long term, maybe for the hackathon)
to just assert that it works like this, because I know/am smart and
have thought about it.

I definetely agree on this.
We should probably have a shared notebook for this, I think we will lose track of emails.

A document on github and using issues?
Some other form of collaborative writing?


Thanks,
Matteo


________________________________________
From: hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io [hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io] on behalf of Chris Mutel via Groups.Io [cmutel@...]
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 10:28 AM
To: hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io
Subject: Re: [hackathon2019] Start of the #ontology sub-group #RDFFramework #ontology

Dear all-

I very much appreciate the work and active participation of people in
this working group! Unfortunately, I must make your lives a little bit
harder :)

1. The final proposal should include not just what you have found
consensus on, but also the alternatives you have considered, and why
they were not chosen. This has two purposes: to stop people from
bringing up the same issues over and over again, and to communicate
that you made informed decisions.

So, for example, when we debate over the modelling of waste treatment,
we should be drawing simple models of each possibility, and then
discussing the practical effects of these models. I don't think it is
sufficient (certainly not in the long term, maybe for the hackathon)
to just assert that it works like this, because I know/am smart and
have thought about it.

2. While I completely agree that in the scope of LCA flow objects are
universal, while activities are located in time and space, we still
need to be able to enter other types of data, such as:
- GDP/population of a country over a time interval
- Recycling rate of different materials in a country (independent of a
particular recycling activity, as this is not specified in the input
data - could be linked later by the system model)
- Total amount of CO2/other emissions observed at a specific spatial
scale over a particular time

3. Simple is better than complex, even if it loses a little bit of
"realism". The lesson that I have learned when re-implementing some of
the modelling choices in version 3 of ecoinvent is that even good
ideas can have weird and unpredictable side effects when combined with
other seemingly good ideas. People appreciate models that they can
understand completely in a few minutes!

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 09:10, <michele.derosa@...> wrote:

Good point Massimo. In Fact, the output flow of the activity "Waste Incineration" should be "TREATED municipal solid waste" and not "Treatment of municipal solid waste"
Michele

--
############################
Chris Mutel
Technology Assessment Group, LEA
Paul Scherrer Institut
OHSA D22
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
http://chris.mutel.org
Telefon: +41 56 310 5787
############################

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 11:34, Bo Weidema <bo.weidema@...> wrote:

Den 2019-03-12 kl. 10.28 skrev Chris Mutel:

2. While I completely agree that in the scope of LCA flow objects are universal, while activities are located in time and space, we still
need to be able to enter other types of data, such as:
- GDP/population of a country over a time interval
- Recycling rate of different materials in a country (independent of a particular recycling activity, as this is not specified in the input data - could be linked later by the system model)
- Total amount of CO2/other emissions observed at a specific spatial scale over a particular time

The three examples of data you mention are not (raw) data inputs, but
rather outputs from querying the database, i.e. they can all be
calculated from the raw data. As such these three examples are weel
siuted as "competency questions" as requested by Matteo.

I guess I am missing something here - I was imagining a system where
GDP, etc. would exactly be raw data inputs, and used to
validate/estimate error on how much of the economy/whatever our system
is able to model. I can't see a CSV from the World Bank being anything
other than a raw data input... ? To me, one of the substantial
advancements of BONSAI is that we are using these new sources of data,
either directly, or as factors in allocating/disaggregating, or as
validation/sanity checks. We want to be explicit about how we
reconcile different sources which are representations of the same data
point.

Best regards

Bo

--
############################
Chris Mutel
Technology Assessment Group, LEA
Paul Scherrer Institut
OHSA D22
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
http://chris.mutel.org
Telefon: +41 56 310 5787
############################

Just to chip in on the discussion on waste and waste treatment activities:

- The problem that a service activity often has the same name as the service that it provides is a well-known problem. It is not solved by inventing new speculative unique names, but rather by linking the instances of the names to their classes (activity or flow-object).

- Principle: We try to avoid making fixed choices, like sign nomenclatures, that are only useful in specific contexts.

- Principle: It is a good practice for a model to stay as close to reality as possible

- Principle: Do not introduce unneccesary (obligatory) classifications

Therefore:

- Wastes, by-products and emissions do not need to be distinguished. Following the physical reality, they are all just non-determining output flows of the activity that produces them and determining input flows to the activity that is activated by their prescence (waste treatment for wastes, recycling activities for by-products for treatment, markets for by-products that do not need treatment, ecological fate activities for emissions). The fact that some calculations require that non-determining outputs are calculated as negative inputs does not mean that the database needs to use such artificial conventions.

Best regards

Bo

Den 2019-03-12 kl. 10.28 skrev Chris Mutel:

2. While I completely agree that in the scope of LCA flow objects are universal, while activities are located in time and space, we still
need to be able to enter other types of data, such as:
- GDP/population of a country over a time interval
- Recycling rate of different materials in a country (independent of a particular recycling activity, as this is not specified in the input data - could be linked later by the system model)
- Total amount of CO2/other emissions observed at a specific spatial scale over a particular time

The three examples of data you mention are not (raw) data inputs, but rather outputs from querying the database, i.e. they can all be calculated from the raw data. As such these three examples are weel siuted as "competency questions" as requested by Matteo.

Best regards

Bo

Hi,

I think that using negative inputs to indicate an outputs is already a complication that may be not clear for many people. I think that Bonsai can be also used by the IO community, not just by LCA. IO practitioners do not like negatives.

Then, for example, in Exiobase (or in the WIOM of Nakamura and Kondo) the determining product (or principal production or reference product) of waste activities is a waste service, for example the service of recycling waste. This to say that perhaps we should agree on the framework that we are going to use. I think there is not unanimous consensus so better to spend some time for deciding the approach to adopt.

Stefano

Chris is right that one can use a negative (= input) reference flow. I just never use this approach and I forgot, my mistake.

I don’t see how we can skip the reference flow concept though if we are going to work with LCA data (deliverable 2 and 3).

Massimo

From: <hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io> on behalf of "Chris Mutel via Groups.Io" <cmutel@...>
Reply-To: "hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io" <hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io>
Date: Monday, 11 March 2019 at 22.32
To: "hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io" <hackathon2019@bonsai.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [hackathon2019] Start of the #ontology sub-group #RDFFramework #ontology

 

I think it would be a mistake to bake too many restrictions into the

general framework. There is a certain mental model that prevails in

LCA, but we don't want BONSAI to accept these restrictions at the

beginning unless they are absolutely necessary, and BONSAI is not just

for LCA (e.g. should also be useful for MFA). For now it might be

worth skipping the determining flow completely, as it doesn't seem

necessary for the hackathon.

 

Determining flows are not always outputs, treatment of waste by

landfill has waste as a determining flow input.

 

 

 

-- 
Best,
S.

Dear all-

I very much appreciate the work and active participation of people in
this working group! Unfortunately, I must make your lives a little bit
harder :)

1. The final proposal should include not just what you have found
consensus on, but also the alternatives you have considered, and why
they were not chosen. This has two purposes: to stop people from
bringing up the same issues over and over again, and to communicate
that you made informed decisions.

So, for example, when we debate over the modelling of waste treatment,
we should be drawing simple models of each possibility, and then
discussing the practical effects of these models. I don't think it is
sufficient (certainly not in the long term, maybe for the hackathon)
to just assert that it works like this, because I know/am smart and
have thought about it.

2. While I completely agree that in the scope of LCA flow objects are
universal, while activities are located in time and space, we still
need to be able to enter other types of data, such as:
- GDP/population of a country over a time interval
- Recycling rate of different materials in a country (independent of a
particular recycling activity, as this is not specified in the input
data - could be linked later by the system model)
- Total amount of CO2/other emissions observed at a specific spatial
scale over a particular time

3. Simple is better than complex, even if it loses a little bit of
"realism". The lesson that I have learned when re-implementing some of
the modelling choices in version 3 of ecoinvent is that even good
ideas can have weird and unpredictable side effects when combined with
other seemingly good ideas. People appreciate models that they can
understand completely in a few minutes!

--
############################
Chris Mutel
Technology Assessment Group, LEA
Paul Scherrer Institut
OHSA D22
5232 Villigen PSI
Switzerland
http://chris.mutel.org
Telefon: +41 56 310 5787
############################

Good point Massimo. In Fact, the output flow of the activity "Waste Incineration" should be "TREATED municipal solid waste" and not "Treatment of municipal solid waste"
Michele

Den 2019-03-11 kl. 22.31 skrev Chris Mutel:

For now it might be worth skipping the determining flow completely, as it doesn't seem necessary for the hackathon.

Not having this concept will mean a loss of information when importing from e.g. EXIObase or ecoinvent.

Bo