The InData Initiative is announcing the public release of its European sustainability data network for construction products
InData is proud to announce the delivery of the next milestone and one of its core objectives: the public release of its data network. Through the InData website, both, product specific and generic data, based on LCA according to international standards for construction products, is available in machine-readable form across multiple international data providers.
The “International Open Data Network for Sustainable Buildings” — InData Working Group — originated from a growing interest in structuring and using information from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for sustainable building assessments. Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), EPDs are a strong instrument for sustainable development for homes and buildings.
Founded in 2015 upon the initiative of the German Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), today InData’s activities are internationally well-known and highly appreciated. InData is an informal, non-profit working group of interested stakeholders who support the mission: to establish an open web based international data network structure for EPD/LCA data using a common data format, offering a common core of information and applying quality rules (InData compliance).
An open network structure is to enable open access to data and thus flexible new applications, while maintaining individual ownership and responsibility for the data by the individual data providers, program operators, and declaration owners. Each data supplier publishes InData compliant data through their own network node, across all of which users can perform queries on the InData website and through an API.
The InData initiative uses the ILCD+EPD data format originally developed for the ÖKOBAUDAT.
Participants from both the public and private sectors from 12 countries are currently represented in the InData Working Group: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
The main objectives of the InData Working Group can be found in the Decalogue.