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 200 IE-related datasets from the literature, including stocks, flows, process descriptions, IO tables, material composition of products, and many more. Launched in 2018, the iedc is continuously improved and expanded.

All data are structured according to a newly developed general data model for socioeconomic metabolism.
We want to show how data storage and exchange in sustainability science could look like in the future 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, and a glossary and FAQ list. 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.

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!
The search interface below allows you to browse the catalogue of datasets and to download the available data as 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 and archive them with the IS4IE.

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

For more information and guidelines on data modeling and integration for material flow analysis and socio-metabolic research, in particular, see the community guidelines and this repository of recommended classifications, which are all available in this database.
Scheme of IEDC database

Data search and download:

+ 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:    

Catalogue of Data Sets

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