Life Cycle Impact Assessment - Task Force 1: LCIA Information system

Aims

Towards the enhancement of the availability of sound LCIA data and methods, this Task Force 1 aims to develop an LCIA information system on the one hand and to finalize and extend the general framework on the other hand.

Motivation

This task force is of the highest importance, as it will provide the necessary tools and guidance to users to take profit of the three task forces on recommended practice. LCA users need to have easy access to recommended practice and new LCIA developments as outdated methods are still commonly applied in practice, potentially leading to misuse of LCA and misinformed decisions.

Work program and work process

In cases where the development of an LCIA method is relatively complex, its application can still be made relatively easy so long as adequate characterization factors are made readily available. One main task is therefore to make recommendations and results of the LCIA programme widely available for users. Based on the work carried out in TF 2 to 4, this will include the creation of a worldwide accessible information system including:
• LCIA guidelines, as described under the framework development;
• Downloadable recommended factors in midpoint and damage categories (in an easily worldwide accessible format, e.g. excel spreadsheet), for a wide range of LCI results;
• Downloadable models to calculate new characterization factors;
• An adequate description of key aspects of the impact pathway (different types of information covered and assumptions made), and proper documentation of the applied models.

Until recommended factors and models are defined, the website will provide links to currently used methods and characterization factors at midpoint and damage levels, enabling users to easily access state-of-the-art methods and to fill-in the different parts of the LCIA framework, highlighting the most significant aspects (generality, assumptions etc) of the considered models.

In addition, the three programmes together should provide a library of case studies illustrating good/successful and bad/unsuccessful uses of LC methodologies in practice, including LCIA. More generally, this task force will take care of specific interactions with the LCI (e.g. waste, definition of elementary flows, etc.) and LCM programmes.

According to this content, the following work programme is foreseen:
• Prototype for the web information system;
• Collection of latest/most widely used LCIA methods, including hyperlinks to respective websites providing characterization factors;
• Comparative analysis of impact categories covered by the different methods, including basic hypotheses, based on inputs from TF 2 to 4;
• Elaboration of the initial LCIA information system;
• Based on recommendations of TF2 to TF4, elaboration of the recommended web information system.

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