Developing a sectoral environmental database for input–output analysis: the comprehensive environmental data archive of the US

This paper elucidates the data sources and data preparation procedures used in developing the sectoral environmental data of the US. The database described in this paper interlinks (1) Input–Output Table (IOT), (2) environmental emission and resources use statistics, and (3) characterization factors from Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) that quantify environmental impacts. Each of these three modules was designed to describe (1) the economic process that generates environmental interventions, (2) the quantity of the environmental intervention generated and (3) the process through which these environmental interventions realize environmental impacts, respectively. The resulting database encompasses 1344 different types of environmental interventions generated by 480 commodities of the US input–output table, linked to 86 commonly used LCIA models. This paper aims to share the experiences of and to elucidate the procedures and the data sources used for developing the sectoral environmental database in the US.