Non-environment flows lack a category

[bkuczenski]

Under the OpenLCA schema, all objects should be categorized. Flows that are elementary have elementary categories; however, many flows are not categorized. See the following two examples, chosen at random from a recent build:

{
  "@type": "Flow",
  "@id": "0a69c698-a3b0-3945-884c-0a75e5f4a444",
  "name": "1,4-Dichloro-2-butene",
  "flowType": "ELEMENTARY_FLOW",
  "flowProperties": [
    {
      "referenceFlowProperty": true,
      "conversionFactor": 1.0,
      "flowProperty": {
        "@id": "93a60a56-a3c8-11da-a746-0800200b9a66"
      }
    }
  ],
  "category": {
    "@id": "42c9fee0-d374-30e8-b2c5-32fa901a691e"
  }
}

{
  "@type": "Flow",
  "@id": "946a7ad3-1042-3ded-8a7f-8368643372ac",
  "name": "Compensation of employees",
  "flowType": "ELEMENTARY_FLOW",
  "flowProperties": [
    {
      "referenceFlowProperty": true,
      "conversionFactor": 1.0,
      "flowProperty": {
        "@id": "3bf53920-157c-4c2f-bddd-7c92c9d35f10"
      }
    }
  ]
}

[bkuczenski]

It is actually only "a few" flows that are not categorized:

[('015046c6-bae5-3f2c-9b6e-d2d693275b5a', 'Jobs'),
 ('2e21b0ba-5505-3a0e-a7ec-4cb04c031c70', 'Gross operating surplus'),
 ('946a7ad3-1042-3ded-8a7f-8368643372ac', 'Compensation of employees'),
 ('d9fe7de6-cf17-30f9-8863-d722dd839af7', 'Taxes on production and imports, less subsidies')]

[WesIngwersen]

Thanks for raising this @bkuczenski. Because they don't fit the elementary flows definition, they aren't part of the FEDEFL. And because they aren't product flows, they don't use the NAICS categories either. We welcome your suggestions on which categories to use.

cc @bl-young

[bl-young]

When importing into openLCA, I believe these flows get dropped just in the Flows folder:

Does this lack of categorization have ramifications elsewhere?

[bkuczenski]

The schema does suggest that it is not required. But since the flows are implicitly categorized (tagged, at least) as "ECONOMIC_FLOW", it improves reusability to make that categorization explicit. Note that there are a few other entities for which the omitted categorization "sticks out":

"Producer price" and "units of currency" both seem to be appropriately "Economic" entities

[bkuczenski]

I will acknowledge that there is no clear procedure for altering OpenLCA's "reference" category list, e.g. to add an "economic flows" category that could be adopted and used by others.

[bl-young]

Yes, I agree it makes sense to embed those flow properties into the correct folder structure. By the way, did you modify them yourself for a different price year?