Brightcon 2026, hackathon and courses

Switzerland's environmental agency BAFU published an "ecoinvent alike" open LCA Database in December 2025. It is planned to have a yearly regular update of the database. It has a focus on Switzerland but includes “RoE”, “RER”, “RoW” and “GLO” datasets as well. So far the official versions are published in ecospold1 and OpenLCA's zolca format. The OpenLCA version includes characterisation factors for IPCC 2021 GWP100, Ecological Scarcity and EF 3.1. The database is published under non-standard, BAFU specific terms of use (which are in parts similar to CC BY-(NC)-SA). Overall it is a convenient starting point for an open LCA background database and allows for community collaboration to increase its quality and coverage (sectors, technologies, geography).

This discussion session shall identify possible ways for the community to join forces for these efforts. Things to be discussed with the audience are:

• What tools are suited to help in the data centred collaboration (e.g. DVC, lakeFS)?
• Is github with issues and tickets the best platform to allow for the organization of the community?
• How to ensure that the community efforts can be included in official BAFU updates (license aspects, formats, ...)?
• What collaboration efforts do already exist? Do they happen openly? How to join them? How to include them?
• What topics are suited and beneficial for collaboration?

Topics which could be suited and beneficial for collaboration:

• Identify priority datasets in BAFU:2025+ for improvement
• Collaborative workflows for dataset updates and new additions
• Integration of other impact assessment methods
• Elementary nomenclature systems (BAFU specific, openLCA, brightway, EF 3.1, future EF 4.0, future UNEP GLAD elementaries)
• Ensuring transparency and reproducibility in contributions
• Legal and license aspects