Data & Tools
ForestPaths builds next-generation methods and tools which will aid in the quantification of policy pathways. These methods and tools help to better estimate the mitigation potential and biodiversity impact of the European forest-based bioeconomy, including the substitution and carbon storage effect of forest-based material and energy products, with appropriate time dynamics.
Material Flow Analysis
To assess the impacts of the different pathways, ForestPaths performed a dynamic Material Flow Analysis (MFA) of wood use related to the European forest-based sector. It was linked with EFI-GTM and IMAGE, focusing on the further processing of semi-finished wood products into finished products. The Material Flow Analysis will become available in 2025.
Life Cycle Assessment
Bw_timex is an open-source Python tool for time-explicit Life Cycle Assessment. It helps you assess the environmental impacts of products and processes over time. Bw_timex allows you to automatically select the production technologies and their associated environmental impacts based on the actual time of the process and offers time-dependent impact assessment methods. This gives more representative LCA results, particularly for long-lived products with evolving supply chains.
Aiphoria is an open-source python tool for assessing and visualizing dynamically wood material flows. Aiphoria allows to visualize wood material flows via a Sankey diagram throughout the product’s supply chain (raw material, transformation, use, post-use). It is built to support both absolute data and relative e.g., connecting statistics on production, import and exports (absolute values) to bibliographic and market/industry data on the end uses of wood (shares). Aiphoria allows for defining different shares (scenario development) of semi-finished wood products to added-value wood product markets. The next update will support the estimation of carbon stocks and stock changes in wood products.
ForestPaths Database
Available in August 2025
ForestPaths will exploit the improved tools to build a database with the product-level substitution and biodiversity factors of targeted forest-based material and energy products that will be used to assess the mitigation potential of the forest-based sector.
Biogenic carbon
Available in August 2026
The cradle-to-grave biodiversity impact of targeted products will be assessed. Biogenic carbon and biodiversity impact assessment methods will be developed to account for the impact of forest management in LCA. A database of characterisation factors for assessing biogenic carbon and biodiversity impact in LCA will be available.