Report and material from the special session on open science in IE during the ISIE-SEM 2026 conference in Cambridge, UK
[Link to slide deck with all contributions below!]
Open science—encompassing open data, open-source tools, and freely accessible teaching materials—holds immense potential to increase the speed and quality of research, reduce redundancy, and democratize knowledge in material flow analysis (MFA) and circular economy research. The special session “Open Data, Tools, and Teaching Materials for IE Research” had two purposes: First, to showcase recent open science developments in our field and second, to provide a platform for a general discussion on actionable next steps on how open science principles can enhance the rigor, accessibility, and impact of CE studies while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. The session brought together researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and discuss the opportunities and challenges of open science, focussing on open data for MFA and CE, open-source tools and software, and open teaching materials and capacity building.
The session featured 14 lightning talks and three pre-recorded videos as well as a final discussion, where participants could engage in identifying actionable steps toward a more open and inclusive CE research ecosystem. Attendees left with insights into best practices for sharing data and tools, strategies for integrating open science into their work, and opportunities to contribute to collaborative projects.
List of speakers and topics:
- Jakob Napiontek - Deep Learning for Privacy-Preserving Open Synthetic Data. We demonstrate how state-of-the-art machine learning can be used to generate synthetic population data that preserves privacy and is therefore available for open research purposes
- Stijn van Ewijk, ISIE Education Committee “A Global Curriculum to support Industrial Ecology Educators”
- Loïs Lozach, ISIE student board:, The educational website for high school students. Explaining IE concepts using simple, relatable language, including SEM, MFA, and other related terms.
- Reed Miller: CandyTown MFA – introducing dynamic MFA
- Tomer Fishman, CML Leiden. RAPID-MFA: MFA python toolpack for learning and ready-to-use code for common dynamic MFA use-cases
- Andre Baumgart: “global high-resolution mobility infrastructure dataset + codebase”
- Jan Streeck: “our latest MISO2 derived global database on economy-wide material cycles+stocks”
- Maud Lanau, Chalmers University, Gothenburg: The BUD-MI template. https://github.com/ML-IE/BUD-MI.
- Tommy Wiedmann – UNWS Sydney: GLORIA MRIO
- Stefan Pauliuk, Freiburg: The Freiburg Open Science Portal for industrial ecology and socio -metabolic research
- Franco Donati - Video - Open tools for primary data collection and estimation of circularity data
- Konstantin Stadler – IndEcol NTNU Norway - Video: Open source Python tools for MRIO: CountryConverter, pymrio, and other tools you didn’t dare to dream about
- Dijuan Liang, University of Toronto: A new open-source material flow module for fully endogenizing material flows into the TEMOA energy system model
- Shuangmei Li, University of Bayreuth: “Open databases and computational tools for high-resolution tracing and optimization of China’s copper cycle”
- Tongyuan Wu, Nankai University and HongKong University: Python-based workflows for geospatial analysis, environmental data processing, geospatial data visualization
- Bennet Weiss: PIK Potsdam: flodym - A Python library for dynamic material flow analysis
- Antoine Teixeira – ADEME, France: MatMat EEIO prospective framework: open-source tools, data, and training materials for forward-looking SEM research
Main discussion point:
We have a lot of good material out there – but how do people get to know about it and how can we make it easier for them to choose the right tool/dataset and have a quick start?
Action items for contributors and promotors of open science in IE:
- Share the slide deck of this session (link below) and contribute to the promotion and discussion on open science in IE via this ISIE announcement and LinkedIn
- Please share new open IE-related software tools via https://github.com/IndEcol/Dashboard (submit a pull request or write and email)
- Please share new open IE-related datasets via Zenodo and link to this community of datasets: https://zenodo.org/communities/indecol/records
- Please share new open IE-related teaching material with the ISIE https://is4ie.org/resources/educational , it can also be listed as additional resource on the IEooc: https://www.industrialecology.uni-freiburg.de/teaching.aspx/
Finally, here is the link to the slide deck with the 17 open science contributions that were presented during this session. Please check, use, and share if you find it useful!
https://www.industrialecology.uni-freiburg.de/Content/ISIE_SEM_Cambridge_Open_Science_Session.pdf
