Industrial Ecology Freiburg

Research group at the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources


Welcome to the Industrial Ecology Data Commons



This database contains more than 250 IE-related datasets from the literature, including stocks, flows, process inventories, material composition and lifetimes of products, and many more. Launched in 2018, the IEDC is continuously improved and expanded.

Read about the 2025 IEDC critical mass sprint here!
All data are structured according to a general data model for socioeconomic metabolism. With the IEDC, we want to show how data storage and exchange in socio-metabolic research and industrial ecology can look like and developed some of the building blocks of the required infrastructure.

The database is open and documented in a public GitHub repository. There is a short video tutorial on how to use the download interface, a video lecture on the data model, a glossary and FAQ list, and a short slide deck on the history behind this database. A journal publication on the data model was published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology in 2019. A blog entry on the vision and background behind the project is also available.

How does the data model work? The general data model for socioeconomic metabolism covers table-based data. Objects and processes in a given system are quantified at different layers (items, mass, energy, monetary, …), either at scale or per unit. More than 30 data types in eight data categories have been defined so far (see the data type scheme for an overview).



The search interfaces below allow you to browse the catalogue of datasets and download the available data as xlsx spreadsheet.

How to cite datasets downloaded from this database: Always refer to the source publication by using the citation information given in the suggested_citation property of each dataset! Before using the data in your own work, double-check the correctness of each dataset downloaded by comparing it to the original publication and report any mistakes you encounter!
We create regular backup copies of this database. The xlsx workbooks with the converted data in IEDC formatting are archived on Zenodo under https://zenodo.org/uploads/14217322.
Scheme of IEDC database

The following links point to the different lookup tables:

    List of all data types
    aspect and dimension tables
    categories, types, and layers tables
    units table
    stats_array table
    provencance, sources, and licenses tables
    classifications definition table and display of selected classification

The development of the IEDC is supported by the EU-Horizon framework via the CIRCOMOD project (https://circomod.eu/) and by the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Freiburg (https://www.unr.uni-freiburg.de). We acknowledge the work of many colleagues who contributed data to the IEDC (see dataset descriptions). We are interested in your feedback and bug reports and also offer direct reading access to the database via SQL. Please send us an email to in4mation*at*indecol.uni-freiburg.de!

Validate your own data against the IEDC data model and classifications

Browse the data catalogue and download datasets:

+ Searching for data? Use keywords!
+ Searching for a specific data type? Use the data type key, such as '1_F' or '3_MC', cf. the list of all data types!
+ Searching for data from a specific publication? Use main author name or DOI! If data source does not have a DOI, use keywords from report title and publishing institution!
+ Searching for a specific dataset from the catalogue? Use the dataset name!

Search Keywords:          Search Tags:    

Check out our additional search features:

Catalogue of Data Sets

Dataset Preview (may take a few moments to refresh):