ExplodeDatabase

The ExplodeDatabase module is the first fundamental component of the T-reX tool, designed for processing Brightway2 life cycle assessment (LCA) databases. It provides a mechanism to expand a given LCA database into a detailed list of all exchanges, facilitating subsequent analysis with the search modules.

Primary Function

The module’s core functionality is to ‘explode’ a Brightway2 database. This term refers to the process of decomposing the database into a single-level, comprehensive list of all exchanges. Each exchange in the database is extracted and documented, including detailed attributes such as name, amount, unit, product, production volume, type, and location.

Process Overview

1. Utilising the wurst library, the module opens the specified Brightway2 database.

2. It extracts information from each process in the database.

3. The extracted data is converted into a pandas DataFrame for ease of analysis and manipulation.

4. The module then expands (‘explodes’) this DataFrame to detail each exchange individually.

5. The resulting data, now a comprehensive list of exchanges, is saved in a .pickle binary file for efficient storage and retrieval.

Usage

The ExplodeDatabase function is invoked with a single argument, the name of the Brightway2 database to be processed. It performs the exploding process, logs the operation, and saves the resulting DataFrame as a pickle file. The function is designed for internal use within the T-reX tool and does not return a value but rather saves the output for subsequent use.