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Hi,

I suppose that the unit of social flows in the Soca (Ecoinvent) database processes is always working hours. It appears that way in some processes ("h"), but the unit is missing in some others.

See image below:

Is it always assumed that the unit is "h"?

Thanks,

Gorka

in openLCA by (200 points)
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1 Answer

+1 vote
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I did some tries with different explicit units, and it seems that the assumed unit is "a", annum, year.

I rectify. I noticed something very strange. In the documentation, it is said that the active variable for all social flows is working hours. In that case, the unit should be hours.

This is coherent with the results, but only to some extent. When an analysis is performed, in the results I obtain, for example, the following:

A rate of fatal accidents, very high risk, is converted to med FA risk hours multiplying by 100 (I agree with that), but there is an "a" next to the working hours (very high risk) which totally misleads me. It cannot be "annum". Actually, if I change the flow unit to explicitly "h", then the total hours are divided by 8760 (a year), and the result is not correct.

So it seems that "a" for every activity variable in social flows should be taken as "h", but if I explicitly mark the unit as "h", then the result is divided by 8760.

Please give me some light, because it seems that the software should be corrected.

(I tried with both 1.6 and 1.7 versions, in linux, and both seem to have the same problem)

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