FLOWSA

FLOWSA attributes environmental flows—including resource consumption, waste production, emissions, and losses—to specific industrial and final-use sectors to enable sector-level environmental accounting and to supply environmental inputs for life-cycle and input-output models developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).

Key Features:

• Data Integration and Standardization: Imports flow use and generation data from diverse providers and transforms inputs into standardized tables while preserving numerical integrity.
• Sector Attribution Models: Allocates primary data sources to industries using secondary data sources and file mapping activities, capturing flows drawn from or released to the environment and inter-sector transfers.
• Customization of Parameters: Allows modification of methodological, spatial, and temporal parameters to compare how changes in sector attribution methodologies affect model outcomes.
• Integration with USEEIO Models: Produces standardized environmental data outputs that serve as inputs to the USEPA's US Environmentally Extended Input-Output (USEEIO) life-cycle models covering approximately 400 categories.

Scientific Applications:

• Industry-specific flow quantification: Quantifies consumption or production of environmental flows by industry sectors for sector-level accounting.
• Life-cycle and input-output analysis: Provides environmental input data for USEEIO and other life-cycle models to assess impacts of goods and services.
• Policy and sustainability assessment: Supports research into sustainable industrial practices and policy development by enabling detailed attribution of resource use, waste generation, emissions, and losses.

Methodology:

Imports primary flow data, transforms inputs into standardized tables while maintaining numerical integrity, and applies sector-attribution models that allocate primary data to industries using secondary data sources and file mapping to capture environmental inputs (e.g., water, land), outputs (e.g., emissions), and inter-sector transfers.