Skip to content

Third-Party Register — chwr_LCA

This register covers every third-party standard, data source, classification system, library, and service that the tool touches or will touch at runtime, in CI, or in documentation.

Maintenance rule: update this file whenever a new dependency is added or an existing dependency's role, licence, or risk profile changes. Entries with UNKNOWN licence must be resolved before the dependency is used in any calculation that feeds a reported result.


1 — Standards referenced in methodology (not redistributed)

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
ISO 14040:2006 Standard Governs LCA framework (goal, scope, inventory, LCIA, interpretation) © ISO — purchase required N L Methodology is described in PROJECT.md / METHODOLOGY.md; the standard itself is not embedded
ISO 14044:2006 Standard Requirements and guidelines for LCA; defines comparative-assertion rules © ISO — purchase required N L Same as above
EN 15804+A2:2019 Standard Product-level EPD rules (PCR); indicator set, declared unit, system boundary © CEN — purchase required N L Same as above
EN 15978:2011 Standard Building-level LCA; module structure A1–D; reporting per §9 © CEN — purchase required N L Same as above
ISO 21931-1:2010 Standard Sustainability framework for buildings; referenced for scope definition © ISO — purchase required N L Same as above
ISO 6946:2017 Standard Building components R-value and U-value calculation (thermal module) © ISO — purchase required N L Formulas documented in METHODOLOGY.md
ISO 13786:2017 Standard Thermal performance of building components — dynamic thermal characteristics © ISO — purchase required N L Same as above
ISO 10456:2007 Standard Thermal properties of building materials — tabulated values © ISO — purchase required N L Relevant table values are transcribed into seed data with citation
ISO 15686-1:2011 Standard Buildings — service life planning; RSL methodology © ISO — purchase required N L Same as above
ISO 14071:2014 Standard Critical review process and reviewer competency (external review target) © ISO — purchase required N L Drives methodology defensibility requirements

2 — Impact characterisation factors

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
EF 3.1 (Environmental Footprint 3.1) Characterisation factors Mandatory LCIA method per decision #1; maps elementary flows to impact indicator scores European Commission — free; specific redistribution terms UNKNOWN N L Factor values embedded in EPD data (via EPD programme operators); EC has long track record for EF series; flag licence UNKNOWN for legal review
IPCC EFDB (Emission Factor Database) Data source Grid electricity emission factors per country (B6 module) IPCC — free; data policy: https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/efdb/main.php N L Factors transcribed as seed data in backend/app/data/grid_factors/ with citation; IPCC data considered public domain for non-commercial use
ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals (CLTD/CLF/SCL tables) Data source Cooling Load Temperature Difference / Cooling Load Factor tables used in B6 thermal engine © ASHRAE — purchase required; tables may not be redistributed N M Tables used for methodology only; actual table data must be entered by licensed users. Methodology engine reads transcribed values; full table redistribution would require ASHRAE licence. Flag for legal review before any public release.

3 — EPD programme operators (foreground data sources)

All EPD impact factors are sourced from the programme operators below. Individual EPD documents carry their own copyright. The tool stores impact values (not full EPD text) in seed EPD JSON files. Each entry in backend/app/data/seed_epds/ must cite the source EPD URL or DOI.

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
EPDASA (EPD Australasia) EPD database A1–A3 impact factors for relevant materials UNKNOWN — free to access; redistribution terms not published N (impact values only, with citation) M Proxy provenance chain documents each EPD; 5-step cascade falls back to other sources
INIES (France) EPD database A1–A3 impact factors for French/European materials (relevant to Francophone West Africa) UNKNOWN — free to access at inies.fr N M Same as above
ÖKOBAUDAT (Germany) EPD database A1–A3 impact factors for generic construction materials; widely cited German Federal Ministry — free; redistribution terms UNKNOWN N L German government-hosted; low disappearance risk; redistribution terms need legal review
EPD Norge EPD database Scandinavian EPDs (used as climate-analogue proxies) UNKNOWN N M Same proxy-provenance mitigation
EPD International EPD database International EPDs from multiple PCR holders UNKNOWN N M Same
IBU (Institut Bauen und Umwelt, Germany) EPD database German EPDs, particularly for cement and steel UNKNOWN N M Same

Action required before v1.0 public release: obtain written redistribution terms from EPDASA, INIES, ÖKOBAUDAT, EPD Norge, EPD International, and IBU for the specific use case of citing impact values in an AGPL-licensed tool.


4 — Literature and reference material

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
Pedrazzi, M. (thesis — Kalan Deme So, Mali) Thesis / reference Primary methodology validation target; regression test numbers in backend/tests/regression/test_kalan_deme_so.py © Pedrazzi, all rights reserved Y (reference/thesis/pedrazzi_compressed_eng.pdf — private repo only) L File in reference/ (read-only); not published externally; repo is private until Phase 3
CRAterre publications Peer-reviewed literature Earth material thermal and mechanical properties © respective journals / authors N L Values cited with DOI in seed data
RILEM TC 274-TCE Peer-reviewed literature Earth material performance data © RILEM / journal publishers N L Same
Ben-Alon et al. (peer-reviewed papers) Literature Earth-material LCA references © journal publishers N L Same
DTU 26.1 Technical report Thermal properties of earth construction (Danish Building Research Institute) UNKNOWN N M Cited with reference; obtain redistribution confirmation before publishing values
XP P13-901:2001 French pre-standard Compressed earth block test methods © AFNOR — purchase required N L Methodology reference only; no redistribution

5 — Classification systems

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
MaterialCategory (project-owned) Classification Primary / canonical internal classification for domain logic (branching, grouping, aggregation). StrEnum in backend/app/schemas/enums.py AGPL-3.0-or-later (project-owned) Y (source code) L No external dependency
Uniclass 2015 (NBS / Hubexo) Classification External code that may be attached to Assembly and Material records; validated for format only (regex ^[A-Z][a-z]_\d{2}_\d{2}_\d{2}$); never validated for membership. Tables are not committed to the repository. CC BY-ND 4.0 — redistribution permitted; no derivatives. NBS asks users not to adapt tables or add codes. N (tables removed in Session 3.8 per decision #22) M Format-only validation requires no vendored table; users supply their own codes. Earth-material codes missing from Uniclass are represented in MaterialCategory.
IFC entity codes (ISO 16739-1) Classification Optional external code on Assembly records; validated for format only (regex ^Ifc[A-Z][A-Za-z]+$); no IFC schema file vendored © buildingSMART International — IFC schema is freely available; redistribution of the schema file would require buildingSMART terms review N L Format-only validation; no vendored schema
UN CPC v2.1 Classification Optional external code on Material records; validated for format only (regex ^\d{5}$) © United Nations Statistics Division — free; public domain for non-commercial statistical use N L Format-only validation; no vendored table

6 — Data schema and internal format

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
openEPD 6.34.2 (Building Transparency) Schema + Python library Internal EPD data format; Epd Python class used to parse and serialise EPD objects; commit SHA 1d48815c135e2d599583e7c10cd65ca706266ea1 pinned in docs/methodology/openepd-subset-decision.md Apache-2.0 N (library installed from PyPI, not committed) L Pin exact version; schema is open and stable; Building Transparency actively maintains it

7 — Runtime Python dependencies

All packages are installed from PyPI and not redistributed in the repository. Licences confirmed from importlib.metadata on the installed environment.

7a — Core runtime

Package Version constraint Licence Disappearance risk Mitigation
fastapi ≥ 0.115 MIT L
uvicorn[standard] ≥ 0.32 BSD-3-Clause L
pydantic ≥ 2.9 MIT L
pydantic-settings ≥ 2.6 MIT L
pydantic-extra-types ≥ 2.10 MIT L
pycountry ≥ 22.3 LGPL-2.1-only L LGPL copyleft applies to modifications of the library itself, not to software that uses it as a runtime dependency; no modification intended
sqlalchemy ≥ 2.0 MIT L
alembic ≥ 1.14 MIT L
psycopg[binary] ≥ 3.2 LGPL-3.0-only L Same LGPL note as pycountry
python-multipart ≥ 0.0.12 Apache-2.0 L
httpx ≥ 0.27 BSD-3-Clause L
openepd == 6.34.2 Apache-2.0 L Pinned; see §6

7b — Development / CI only

Package Version constraint Licence Disappearance risk Mitigation
pytest ≥ 8.3 MIT L
pytest-cov ≥ 6.0 MIT L
pytest-asyncio ≥ 0.24 Apache-2.0 L
ruff ≥ 0.7 MIT L
mypy ≥ 1.13 MIT L
pre-commit ≥ 4.0 MIT L
openpyxl ≥ 3.1 MIT L Used in tests for reading reference Excel files
hatchling (build system) MIT L Only needed at build time; not a runtime dep

7c — Documentation build only

Package Version constraint Licence Disappearance risk Mitigation
mkdocs == 1.6.1 BSD-2-Clause M Tech-debt flag: MkDocs development pace has slowed; version pinned to 1.6.1. Monitor upstream for 2.x migration path.
mkdocs-material == 9.7.6 MIT (community edition) L Community edition is free and open; Insiders features not used
pymdown-extensions == 11.0.1 MIT L

8 — Infrastructure and services

Name Type How used Licence / access Redistributed? Disappearance risk Mitigation
PostgreSQL 16 Database Primary persistence layer PostgreSQL License (BSD-like, permissive) N L Industry-standard; replaceable at ORM layer
Cloudflare Pages Hosting service Docs site hosting (static build output) Proprietary — free tier N M Docs site is static; build artifact can be redeployed to any static host (Netlify, GitHub Pages, self-hosted nginx) in one CI change
GitHub Hosting / CI service Repository, GitHub Actions CI, CLA bot integration Proprietary — free for public/private repos N M git history and CI configs are portable; Actions can be replaced by GitLab CI or Forgejo
contributor-assistant/github-action GitHub Action CLA signature enforcement on pull requests MIT N L CLA signatures stored in .github/cla-signatures.json in the repo; bot is replaceable

Last updated: Session 3.8 (2026-07-13). Maintained by Chiwara S.r.l.