Dr. Aleksandar Tošić, InnoRenew CoE researcher, in collaboration with Bogdan Šinik from University of Primorska, recently published a scientific article “Testing life-cycle assessment data quality with Benford ’s law reveals geographic variation,” in Ecological Informatics.

In the study authors performed the Benford’s law conformity tests (first digit) on all numerical data in ecoinvent, focusing on individual compartments (air, water, soil, and natural resources) and environmental elementary flows (carbon, toxic substances, greenhouse gases, and heavy metals), and discrepancies across continents were examined.

Findings suggest that discrepancies in conformity across continents reflect differences in data transparency and reporting practices.