Project settings
Settings that change the results of a whole project.
The settings under Impact calculation change the results of the whole project, so settle them before you report. Open them from Settings in the sidebar, or from Change on the Impacts Method tab.
General
Here you edit the project's name, description, and reporting period. They don't change results. See Projects.
Impact calculation
These settings decide which data and choices go into your results. The table gives an overview, and the sections below explain each setting.
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental factors | Current set when the project was created | Dataset and impact model versions behind your default results. Updating recalculates the project. |
| Outlier treatment | On | Caps extreme default factor values. Recalculates the project. |
| Traced origins | Off | Uses origin-country factors for upstream biodiversity impact. Nature only. Recalculates the project. |
| Ecosystem weighting | Off | Weights terrestrial, freshwater, and marine impacts in the Nature total. Nature only. Applies at once. |
| Base currency | EUR | Currency of spend and intensities. Applies at once. |
A recalculation runs in the background for the whole project. The status bar on Activities shows its progress.
Environmental factors
Each project pins one set of dataset versions: the factor datasets (GLORIA 120 v059a, EXIOBASE 200 v3.10.1) and the impact model (LC-Impact v1.3). Results in a project never mix versions, so a number you reported stays reproducible.
When Nios releases a newer set, the settings show "An updated factor set is available." with Update. Updating recalculates every activity with the new versions, so totals can change.
Export your results before you update if you need the old numbers. See Results and export.
Outlier treatment
Input-output tables contain a few sector and country factors that are extreme, often because the source data for that combination is small or noisy. With outlier treatment on, Nios caps a factor that falls in the top or bottom 1% of values, but only when it's extreme both within its sector and across all sectors.
Outlier treatment applies to the Nios default factors only. Your impact inputs are never capped. Turn it off if you need to reproduce raw GLORIA or EXIOBASE values. See Methodology for the method.
Traced origins
A purchase carries impacts from many countries upstream, for example the farms behind a processed food. By default, Nios converts these pressures into biodiversity impact with global LC-Impact factors. With traced origins on, Nios splits the upstream pressure by origin country and converts each part with that country's factor. Where a country has no factor, it uses the continent's factor, then the global one.
Traced origins applies only where the factor data has origin detail, and only to the Nature lens: LC-Impact has a single global factor for climate change. Pressures and intensities stay aggregated.
Ecosystem weighting
With weighting off, Nios adds the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biodiversity impacts, each counting fully. Turn it on to weight them by importance instead: Nios multiplies each ecosystem's impact by its weight before adding them.
The weights start at 0.34, 0.33, and 0.33 and must add up to 1.00, with up to three decimals. Because the weights add up to 1, the weighted total is an average of the three ecosystems, so Nature totals become much smaller than with weighting off.
Example: El Geneidy et al. (2023) propose 0.801 for terrestrial, 0.096 for freshwater, and 0.102 for marine. Nios accepts it because the sum, 0.999, is within rounding.
Weighting is a value choice. LC-Impact recommends reporting the three ecosystems separately unless you weight them deliberately. Note whether you weighted, and with which weights, when you share results.
Base currency
The base currency is the currency of every intensity, such as PDF·yr/EUR, and of the spend shown on the Impacts page. Nios converts each activity's spend at its activity year's exchange rate. Changing the base currency doesn't change pressures or impacts.