Outreach email (task 1a)The email sent out by UNEP - is copied below. The history of the task (orignal text and email log) can be found below this. Email to UNEP/SETAC LCI Working group Dear all, If you are in any way connected with providing Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data this message is for you. Please read further to find out how your database can be included in the UNEP/SETAC LCI Database Registry; a comprehensive web-based listing of available LCI databases for the world LCA community. The work to compile the registry is being undertaken by Task Force 1 of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative's Inventory Programme. The database registry will provide a comprehensive survey of the growing wealth of LCI data resources in existence, and will contribute to the capacity building efforts of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative by highlighting where data gaps exit, as well as by providing a useful resource for LCI data users worldwide. LCI databases are currently poorly networked and most projects to be
representative of a particular geographical subset of the whole. We
therefore aim to establish worldwide contacts with all LCI database
projects, including: If you are involved in any such LCI database project, or have completed such a project in the past, please reply to this mail. We consider this reply as an of expression of interest to UNEP to get your database registered. You are invited to send a brief database description with your reply. Later on, you will be contacted to formalise your participation in this exciting project by filling in a short questionnaire. In the short survey you will be asked to provide contact details, web links (if available) and some basic information about your database (e.g. access to data, cost, geographical coverage, materials/processes included). The database registry will be published as a regularly updated web-portal, together with a summary document. The registry will be published in English, but if you would like to receive the survey in Japanese, please state this in your reply. Please find attached a short description on the US LCI database project to give you an idea of what type of information we would like to publish. f you have any questions, please contact me or look for some more background on the SETAC/UNEP Life Cycle Initiative at: http://www.uneptie.org/sustain/lcinitiative/ Please forward this email (or send us an introduction) to anyone you know involved in LCI database development that you think would like to be informed of the database registry. Best regards, Secretariat UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative Email from Pippa, 10/08/2004 13:36 Dear team As you may recall, establishing contact with all potential "clients" for our registry is task 1a on our task list. If we are successful with this, the less work we will have to do searching for and contacting data providers down the line, so we really need to make it good. The message needs to clearly (and in a short) lay out the key selling points of the database registry, and most importantly, grab the attention of all those involved in providing LCI data. To this end, I have drafted a short text (attached) to be sent out in an email to the UNEP mailing list. But I am no salesperson! Please let me know how this does. Suggestions, changes most welcome..... The sooner we can get this out, the better, but we must definitely get it to Guido before the end of Aug. So please can we have a first round of comments until 22 August, at the latest. Thanks Note: the attachment to this email can be downloaded here Email from Mary Ann, 23/08/2004 15:11 Hi Pippa and Other TF1 members - Sorry to have taken this long to reply to your cry for help on the database registry. It's good that you are staying so attentive to the task and trying to keep it moving along. I have to admit that I still have my doubts about the need for creating a database about databases. The utility of it escapes me, but if that is the direction the group is determined to go in, I will do what I can to help. I am also not sure about how successful sending an outreach letter will be. It's too much like fishing - hopefully it will go to the right people, but it may not encourage good response. As I mentioned in earlier emails, we have done a lot of work to identify data providers for our LCAccess website. It would be much more effective to see the databases we know about (ie the ones in LCAccess) and send a letter to each provider. That kind of letter would already describe the database, and ask the provider to verify the information. Once the registry is in place and we begin to advertise its availability, anyone not on the list can contact us to be included. I am assuming people will find it a desirable list to be on. So, what I need to do is get that list of providers from LCAccess. I will see what I can get done by Wednesday. OK? Mary Ann Email from Pippa, 23/08/2004 16:40 Hi Mary Ann (and everyone else) Thanks for this. I agree very much that a targeted approach will ultimately be what is required. This "fishing expedition" is really just to see if we can turn up anyone we may not have thought of (especially hoping for non-European and non-North American efforts). We would definitely follow it up with the kind of actions you identify. To me, a first-round awareness-raising email can't really hurt, and may just turn up something interesting. Do you feel strongly against sending out the first-round email? (in which case we can wait and discuss with everyone at the conference call). Otherwise, I suggest we let Guido send out the email, and just view it as a help in compiling the list of people we need to target as you suggest. So, in response to your comments:
Sorry to hear that not even our own task force members are "sold" on the idea ;-) I'm afraid you would need to take that up with UNEP, as I think that's where the idea for TF1 came from. Nonetheless, I hope we can provide something useful. The idea of a registry (or database of databases) does seem rather narrow, but perhaps if we view it more as an information resource - a sort of global clearing-house for information on LCI data - we can see more utility in our efforts?
We are definitely relying on your excellent efforts here!!
I agree completely. The "fishing" is just to cast the net as wide as possible..
Fabulous idea. We are so much more likely to get a response if someone feels they will be misrepresented (or hopefully just under-represented) in the registry.
Yes, I hope very much that will be the case.
We already have the document you provided earlier (dated March 2003). Do you have an update? What we will need is the names of contact people for everyone on the list (some you have in detail, and others not). That seems quite a task, so definitely not something I'd expect before Wed! Best wishes Email from Greg Norris, 23/08/2004 18:33 Dear TF1 members, Just a quick note on the question of "why do this task at all?" Two years ago Pippa and I set out to write a simple document summarizing what was available, around the world, in the way of ready-to-use LCI databases. It seemed a simple task, but it was not! And, we found that every "expert" we asked also lacked a complete picture. Everyone knew of a few databases, and/or a website which pointed to either a few databases, or (as in the case of LCAccess) a mixture of LCI data and raw data that might be useful to people who were wanting to create LCI data. This lack of a place to go, in cyberspace or the published literature, to get an up-to-date summary of the available and ready-to-use LCI databases in the world, is still true, and in my mind makes the work of TF1 EXTREMELY valuable indeed! Thanks again for all your ongoing contributions! Greg Email from Mary Ann, 26/08/2004 22:21 Pippa - Of course, I didn't have time to work on the list of data providers as I had hoped to this week. Attached is a rough list that SAIC extracted from our LCAccess website information. As you can see, a lot of the contact names are missing, but maybe it's a good start for what we need to do. When I get back to the office on Thursday (2 September) I will try to connect names with groups. Maybe in the meanwhile, if anyone on the group already has some of this contact information, or sources not on the list, they can send it to me so I can add it to the list. How does that sound? Mary Ann The first tab is a list of the data providers with contact information (if any) and the second tab is the list of all data sources with the information on how to obtain the data. (See attached file: Data Providers.xls) Email from Pippa, 27/08/2004 12:01 Hi Mary Ann Thanks for this. It will indeed be a very good starting point. I have asked Guido to still go ahead with the UNEP "outreach" because I believe the two approaches complement each other well. The LCAccess list is particularly strong with respect to international organisations, special-interest groups and government institutions - all I believe not well represented in the SETAC/UNEP Life Cycle Initiative (i.e. unlikely to be on the mailing list). Missing from the LCAccess list are LCA organisations, national database efforts, and a wider global focus (i.e. there are no African, Australian or South American data sources, and only 2 Asian) - something I hope very much we will get from the SETAC/UNEP Life Cycle Initiative user group. I too encourage everyone to think of data providers they know of (and their primary contacts), and to send them to you to add to the list. I look forward to discussing this further during the conference call. Thanks, and best wishes |
 |
