Provider linking issue in Environmental Footprint Database background system?

Question

I started working with the EF database to get environmental profiles of some materials.
Each calculation type (direct calculation of unit process / product system calculation of unit process / product system calculation of system process) leads to very different results.

In my case, I calculated "Carbon fibre production, production mix, at plant, technology mix, 100% active substance".

When comparing contribution trees, I discovered that the "connector" processes vary, and there are no default providers set in the unit processes.
I take from this that currently only the system processes in this database are reliable.

Is this a known issue, and are there any possible solutions to solve this besides sticking to system processes?

Thanks and best regards, Johannes

Answer 1

Indeed, and as we also write in the documentation, the EF database is not suitable for any automatic linking when creating product systems, they must be created by manual connection. This is a limitation of the database, it contains many processes declared as fully aggregated that are indeed not fully aggregated but contain a tiny amount of other products. It also contains many products that are just "cargo" or similar, which means that we cannot establish providers for products, as we do in other databases.

Maybe 90% of the processes in the database are system processes, thus the manual connection is typically feasible.

Best wishes,

Andreas