GaBi Data - Important notes

Modifying the quantities under "Material declaration electronics" or costs / price quantities

• Date: 9^th July 2019
• Description: Did you change the values of any of the "electronics" quantities (i.e., those found in the quantities folder "material declaration electronics") for any of the thinkstep-delivered GaBi flows?
  Did you change any of the cost or price quantity values for any of the thinkstep-delivered GaBi flows?
  Did you add additional quantities to the flow properties of the thinkstep-delivered GaBi flows?
   
  If for at least one of these questions your answer is ''yes'' please be aware that updating your databases means:
  - These values will be overwritten with the originally thinkstep-delivered values or will receive a thinkstep-corrected value.
  - The quantity amount will be deleted wherever you added it to thinkstep-delivered GaBi flows.
  GaBi updates always do this. We wanted to highlight this, because not all users are aware of it. To continue using your modified quantity values in GaBi, please create a copy of the affected quantities. If necessary, adjust any own analysis/export or f_q_convert functions, so they work with those copies. Please be aware that the copied quantities are under your full control and will not be touched by any future update. None of this affects any of the flows you may have created or any other quantities.
  

Remarks regarding the new LCIA methodologies Environmental Footprint (both EF 2.0 and 3.0) and EN 15804:2019

• Date: 9^th July 2019
• Description: Among the new impact assessment methods, we recommend caution when drawing conclusions based on the results for the toxicity impact assessment methods (i.e., Human toxicity cancer, Human toxicity non-cancer, and Freshwater eco-toxicity) as well as Resource depletion (minerals and metals). The methodologies might not be robust and proficient enough (and are lacking application experience with widely used LCI databases) for making important decisions based on the results calculated with those impact assessment methods.
  
  Please note that following the revised EN 15804:2019 (same as under the Environmental Footprint 2.0 and 3.0 rules) non-ILCD/EF compliant flows should never be characterized, even if there is a technical equivalence in an LCA context. This affects particular ore resource flows of specific metal content (e.g., “Lead - zinc ore (4.6% - 0.6%”), “Iron ore”, …) and all minerals that are not included in the ILCD/EF flow list. Some datasets from industry associations and older EPD datasets—that thinkstep is republishing unchanged—still make use of these flows. Therefore, those datasets may calculate relevantly lower impacts in “Resource depletion, minerals and metals” than they would if those flows were replaced by ILCD/EF compliant flows (e.g., in the above case “Zinc [Non-renewable elements]”, “Lead [Non-renewable elements]”, “Iron [Non-renewable elements]”). We therefore recommend caution when using such datasets in models intended to apply the impact methods/quantities of EN15804:2019, EF 2.0 and EF 3.0.

ILCD (EF 2.0) import (LCIA conversion for imported radioactive emissions flows the does not work as intended)

• Date: 9^th April 2019
• JIRA tracking number: GaBi-14282
• Fixed till: Fixed with GaBi ts 8.7.1
• Description: During the ILCD (EF 2.0) import, the LCIA factors for newly imported radioactive emissions flows are not set correctly in the EF 2.0 quantity for ionizing radiation. The factor added to the quantity is low by a factor of 1000.

CFK datasets (Extension database XXII: carbon composites 2019)

• Date: 28^th March 2019
• JIRA tracking number: not applicable
• Fixed till: GaBi 9.0 released on May 2019
• Description: The carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) and Carbon fiber (CF) processes released in the " Extension database XXII: carbon composites 2019" had a wrong output emission flow. The emissions of the protective gas nitrogen were classified as “Nitrogen, total” instead of “Nitrogen (atmospheric nitrogen)”. This leads to a wrong eutrophication in the following impact categories: CML2001 - Apr. 2013, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001 - Apr. 2015, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001 - Dec. 07, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001 - Jan. 2016, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001 - Nov. 09, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001 - Nov. 2010, Eutrophication Potential (EP), CML2001, Eutrophication Potential (EP), EN15804 - Eutrophication potential (EP), ReCiPe 1.08 Midpoint (E) - Marine eutrophication, ReCiPe 1.08 Midpoint (H) - Marine eutrophication, ReCiPe 1.08 Midpoint (I) - Marine eutrophication, TRACI 2.0, Eutrophication, TRACI 2.1, Eutrophication. The error in eutrophication is about three orders of magnitude too high. The correction will lead to LCI changes in all carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) and Carbon fiber (CF) processes, in total 79 datasets.
  

Reference year of energy datasets

• Date: 15^th March 2019
• JIRA tracking number: not applicable
• Fixed till: next yearly upgrade of the energy datasets, planned for beginning of 2020
• Description:  GaBi energy datasets are yearly updated, based on the latest worldwide consistently available international statistics agencies. The basis of the GaBi version 2019 datasets are publications from the year 2017, covering the reference year of 2015. By mistake the documentations of the energy datasets the documentation field “reference year” states a wrong reference year (2016, whereas 2015 would be correct). In the documentation field “flow diagram” the right reference year of 2015 is displayed. Also the publications linked in the documentation field “data sources used for this data set” are correct. Practitioners wanting to document the reference year of the datasets used in their studies are advised to look at the flow diagram.
  

IC datasets (Extension database XI: electronics 2018)

• Date: 18^th October 2018
• JIRA tracking number: GC-7601 and GC-7564
• Fixed till: gup released ASAP still in 2018
• Description:  The IC processes released in the "Extension database XI: electronics 2018" had a unit conversion error at one dedicated calculation step in the electronics model. The correction will lead to LCI changes in 41 affected data sets. About half of the affected IC processes will have about 1% or less increase of GWP Impact.  10 processes will have less than 10% increase of GWP Impact, 12 processes will have less than 18% increase of GWP Impact and IC DIP 24 (1.7g) 35.5x8.2 mm CMOS logic (250 nm node) will have about 30% increase of GWP Impact compared to the currently released version of these data sets.
  

Special high grade zinc IZA

• Date: 17^th May 2018
• JIRA tracking number: GC-6808
• Fixed till: gup released together with GaBi 8.7 (28th May 2018)
• Description: The modified Special high grade zinc IZA dataset released in GaBi Databases 2018 in February referred to an old version of this dataset, which was published in the LCA Journal (November 2016, Volume 21, Issue 11, pp 1580–1593). This was now corrected back to the previous, correct version of this dataset.

French EPD quantity water pollution (NF EN 15804) deeper characterized than necessary. Higher Impacts results possible.

• Date: 08^th December 2017
• JIRA tracking number: GC-5972
• Fixed till: SP 35 release (first quarter 2018)
• Description: Up to now more flows/ exchanges than the ones listed in the standard were characterized in GaBi, but not foreseen officially in the standard. This leads to higher values for this indicator than expected, if results are intended that are based on the official values.

IC WLP CSP datasets (Extension database XI: electronics 2017)

• Date: 10^th November 2017
• JIRA tracking number: GC-5594
• Fixed till: GaBi 8.2 release Nov/Dec 2017
• Description: The 15 IC WLP CSP processes released in the "Extension database XI: electronics 2017" are inaccurate. The correction of this will lead to relevant LCI changes in the affected 15 data sets, with changes e.g. in the GWP Impact results between about -30% to +60%, compared to the currently available Versions of these data sets. Note that the other IC datasets are not affected.

Beverage carton converting u-so from ACE/ELCD

• Date: 14^th February 2017
• JIRA tracking number: GC-4910
• Fixed till: Service Pack 35, to be published in January 2018
• Description: Valuable substance flows in the unit process are not correctly marked as such and the parametrization of the main Input masses got lost, leading to inconsistent unit process units. In sum they should be around 350-400 kg per 1000 m². However the emissions seem to represent correct values for the 1000 m². A corrected version will be made available soon. We do not recommend to use this dataset until the corrected Version is made available.

Characterization factor of NMVOC unspecified

• Date: 14^th February 2017
• JIRA tracking number: GC-4580
• Fixed till: Service Pack 33, published on 14^th February 2017
• Description: POCP value for the CML quantities was originally calculated from substance composition as no specific value was calculated by CML. Since now a specific value as a non-baseline value has been provided by CML as 0.15 kg Ethene-eq., this has been implemented. Due to this, the results for POCP will decrease. 

Water flows renamed

• Date: 23^rd January 2017
• JIRA tracking number: GC-4458
• Fixed till: Service Pack 33, published on 14^th February 2017
• Description: To increase the consistency with the ILCD flow naming, the water flows were renamed with SP33. The following table shows the updated names of the flows in comparison to their original names.