How can I use Brightway2 with US LCI database? - brightway

Question

Short version:
I am trying to upload US LCI database to Brightway2 and I am failing miserably. Has anyone succeeded? If so, could you share it with me? :D
Long version:
I am following the notebook IO - Importing the US LCI database notebook and I am having a lot of problems. I am aware that, as the notebook indicates, it is a work in progress. Anyhow, I wanted to give it a try:
I tried uploading every ecospold version database found here, following the method from the notebook. The only one that gave me a similar results was version FY20.Q3.02. However, right off the bat I get the following differences/errors:
Same as the notebook, I get this error: Couldn't apply strategy link_technosphere_by_activity_hash: Object in source database can't be uniquely linked to target database. And two activities that are linked. When I follow the instructions of ignoring these datasets, it throws me that error over and over again.
Trying to move on with the tutorial, I get more errors and at the end I end up with all exchanges unlinked:
633 datasets
37513 exchanges
37505 unlinked exchanges
Finally, after running the code in line [15]:
import functools
f = functools.partial(link_iterable_by_fields,
other=Database(config.biosphere),
kind='biosphere'
)
sp.apply_strategy(f)
sp.statistics(f)
I end up with:
0 datasets
0 exchanges
0 unlinked exchanges
Which is hilarious and sad at the same time. Since I am new with Python and BW, my troubleshooting is clumpsy and probably erroneous (I promise I googled a lot and went through the code). And concluded I am failing and it is time to ask questions:
Has anybody succeeded uploading the US LCI database to Brightway2?
If so, how? Which file did you use?
Thank you!!!!

Answer 1

This is an excellent question. I have added text to the offending notebook to note that it is obsolete.
In general, I think trying to import the ecospold files is a fools errand, as though they are labeled ecospold2, they are actually ecospold1 (which is a totally different format):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<ecoSpold xmlns="http://www.EcoInvent.org/EcoSpold01">
The most recent export also raises an error when I try the ecospold1 importer:
AttributeError: no such child: {http://www.EcoInvent.org/EcoSpold01}modellingAndValidation
This is a required attribute in ecospold1.
I think the best way forward would be to consume the JSON-LD directly. Note that it is important not to run bw2setup(), as you would also want to use their list of elementary flows and LCIA methods. Currently the experimental JSON-LD importer fails because the provided datasets need allocation, but don't provide a set of consistent allocation methods. When I use the git checkout of bw2io and do the following:
uslci = JSONLDImporter(
"/Users/cmutel/Downloads/National_Renewable_Energy_Laboratory-USLCI_Database/",
"US LCI",
preferred_allocation="CAUSAL_ALLOCATION"
)
uslci.apply_strategies()
I get the following error:
UnallocatableDataset: We currently only support exchange-specific CAUSAL_ALLOCATION
This is fixable, but someone would need to step through this and fix the allocation procedure, and I don't have the time to do that now.