Glossary¶

Project-specific terms. For industry-wide acronyms (REST, JWT, OIDC), see the relevant ADR or external reference.

Activity — A unit of measured work that emits CO2 (a flight, a kWh of lab power, a kg of purchased material). Multiplied by an emission factor.

ADR (Architecture Decision Record) — A dated record of one accepted architectural decision. See architecture-decision-records/.

Affiliation — A user's link to one or more EPFL units, sourced from Accred. Scopes what backoffice users may view or edit (issue #459).

Backoffice — The administrative surface: user management, factor management, audit, ingestion. Permissions live under backoffice.*. See backend/07-DEVELOPER-GUIDE-PERMISSIONS.md.

claim_job — Atomic SQL operation that flips a job from NOT_STARTED to RUNNING and sets is_current=TRUE in one transaction. Pod-collision losers lose the UPDATE, not the data. See ADR-010, ADR-015.

CRD (Customer Requirements Document) — The mandate spec at architecture/spec.md. Top of the source-of-truth hierarchy.

Data-entry user — Role that submits activity data for a unit. Distinct from validators and backoffice operators. See ADR-005.

Emission factor — Coefficient mapping an activity quantity to kg CO2-eq. Versioned by year and scope; ingested via the factor pipeline.

Factor pipeline — Bulk import and normalization workflow that ingests CSV factor sources into canonical factor tables and triggers recalculation. See 310-b-factor-pipeline.md.

GHG Protocol — The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the international emissions accounting standard. Defines Scope 1, 2, and 3.

GET /v1/session — Whoami endpoint. Returns the cached user profile, roles, and computed permissions in ~8 ms.

Path 1 vs Path 2 — Operational paths in the bulk-job model. Path 1 is per-request work for a single user. Path 2 is bulk operator workflows (CSV ingest, factor sync, recalc). See ADR-010.

Recalc — Re-running emission computations after a factor change or classification fix. Triggered automatically when factor pipelines deliver new versions. See 310-b-factor-pipeline.md.

/refresh — Endpoint that triggers a background role sync from Entra/Accred and returns immediately. Pair with /me to read the result. See role-sync-architecture.md.

Role sync — Background process that reconciles a user's roles and affiliations from the upstream identity provider into the local DB. Tracked via last_roles_sync_at. See ADR-012.

Scope 1 / 2 / 3 — GHG Protocol categories. Scope 1: direct emissions (on-site combustion). Scope 2: purchased energy. Scope 3: all other indirect emissions (travel, purchases, services).

Validator — Role that approves submitted data before it counts toward published totals. Sits between data-entry users and backoffice operators in the permission hierarchy. See ADR-005.