Suggestion: show impact categories for a biosphere flow which the biosphere flow contributes to

[CHarpprecht]

Dear AB Team,

it would be great to be able to see all impact categories, which a certain biosphere flow contributes to.

When doing the inventory modelling, it would be helpful for the practitioner to get an idea, which biosphere flow might contribute to which impact category (and its respective characterization factor), or whether a flow is actually not relevant at all currently as it is not being characterized in any category (see e.g. oxygen ?).

I could imagine this with a right click on a biosphere flow e.g. within the biosphere3 database. Instead of "open activity" as it is for processes, it could say "show characterization factors" (or sth. else).

This could save a lot of time during the modelling and help to prioritize data analysis of certain flows with high CFs.

[marc-vdm]

Duplicate/related to: #584

[marc-vdm]

Current status

It's not possible in BW to get this data automatically. We'd need to write something AB specific to implement this, though this would indeed be very beneficial to have when modeling in AB.

Proposal

Create a BiosphereCharacterizationMapping class (name doesn't need to be this specifically) somewhere in bwutils. The class could manage and update this data.

Mapping

• The mapping should be something like a dict with biosphere codes for keys and a list of impact categories for values.
• This mapping should be stored on disk on project level
• The mapping should also store a list of cached impact categories (ideally with a hash of the impact category)
• Every time when a project is selected (e.g. when AB starts or project switch), AB should check if the list is the same (ideally by checking hashes)
• The mapping should be updated every time either biosphere changes (e.g. through update biosphere) or something changes about impact categories, this can be 2 things: 1) impact categories are added or deleted 2) CFs are added or edited within an impact category

Interaction

• AB should add a context menu+doubleclick option when biosphere is selected to open biosphere flow
• This opens a tab similar to 'activity details'
• This tab shows metadata for the flow (e.g. CAS number, categories, other???)
• This also open 2 tables in the tab:
  • Impact categories that have a CF for this biosphere flow (2 cols, name, CF)
  • Activities that use this biosphere flow
  • The tables should have context menus to open the respective IC/activities
• Whenever a biosphere flow is opened like described, AB should check if it exists in mapping cache or otherwise generate a cache entry. This way we make this feature available for new projects, while being completely cached in new projects already.