Activity Browser

Important

Activity Browser 3 (moving out of the beta phase anytime soon) is the version we recommend for new installs. It is already far ahead of the AB2 (soon legacy) version.

It comes with a refreshed UI, runs on Brightway 2.5 and adds multifunctionality via bw_functional. Please try it and report issues.

Seel also: Activity Browser 3 Documentation

The Activity Browser (AB) is an open-source GUI for Life Cycle Assessment on Brightway.

Highlights

• Fast LCA calculations: for multiple reference flows, impact categories, and scenarios
• A productivity tool for Brightway: model in Brightway (Python) and see the results in the AB or vice versa
• Advanced modeling: Use parameters, scenarios (including prospective LCI databases from premise), uncertainties and our Graph Explorer
• Advanced analyses: Contribution analyses, Sankey Diagrams, Monte Carlo, and Global Sensitivity Analysis
• Plugins: Extend the functionality of Activity Browser with Plugins

Installation (AB3)

See the Installation Guide for a more comprehensive guide.

PyPI (recommended)

CREATE the virtual environment:

# do this in a directory you can remember, e.g. ...user\virtualenvs\
python -m venv ab3

ACTIVATE the virtual environment:

# on Windows:
ab3\Scripts\activate

# on macOS/Linux:
source ab3/bin/activate

INSTALL the Activity Browser:

pip install activity-browser

RUN the Activity Browser:

activity-browser

Conda

We are currently waiting for the AB3 (and bw_functional) to be accepted onto conda-forge. In the meantime, we recommend to use the PyPi install above.

conda create -n ab3 -c conda-forge lca::activity-browser
conda activate ab3
activity-browser

First Steps

See our Getting Started wiki page to learn how to get started using Activity Browser.

Contributing

The Activity Browser is a community project. Your contribution counts!

If you have ideas for improvements to the code or documentation or want to propose new features, please take a look at our contributing guidelines and open issues and/or pull-requests.

If you experience problems or are suffering from a specific bug, please raise an issue here on github.

Developers

Current maintainers

• Bernhard Steubing (creator, maintainer)
• Marc van der Meide (maintainer)

Important contributors

• Marin Visscher
• Jonathan Kidner
• Remy le Calloch
• Daniel de Koning
• Adrian Haas
• Chris Mutel

AB 2 (legacy)

Activity Browser 2 is the previous stable version, but not actively maintained anymore (Brightway2). Prefer AB3 beta for new work.

Installation (see also: Installation Guide (wiki)):

conda create -n ab -c conda-forge activity-browser
conda activate ab
activity-browser

License and Copyright

This project is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL v3 or later), see license file.

• Copyright (c) 2014-2026: Bernhard Steubing
• Copyright (c) 2014-2016: ETH Zürich
• Copyright (c) 2018-2024: Universiteit Leiden