In the form of IBU.data, IBU offers sig­nif­i­cant­ly added val­ue for the users of EPDs: a data base of its own is asso­ci­at­ed with short pub­li­ca­tion cycles for new EPDs while in-house oper­a­tion means that all IBU EPDs gen­er­at­ed in the EPD online tool can now be made avail­able in dig­i­tal form for the first time. This reduces depen­dence on the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of exter­nal data base operators.
This also makes IBU.data a pio­neer of devel­op­ment in Europe among pro­gramme oper­a­tors of EPDs hop­ing to make their data avail­able to the pub­lic in dig­i­tal form. This is based on the con­cept of the Euro­pean InDa­ta team which entails pro­gramme own­ers devel­op­ing a net­work of dig­i­tal EPD data as XML files based on the ILCD for­mat (Inter­na­tion­al Life Cycle Dataset).