Designers use this process to help critique their products. LCAs can help avoid a narrow outlook on environmental concerns by Compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases Evaluating the potential impacts associated with identified inputs and releases Interpreting the results to help make a more informed decision. Goals and purposeeditThe goal of LCA is to compare the full range of environmental effects assignable to products and services by quantifying all inputs and outputs of material flows and assessing how these material flows affect the environment. This information is used to improve processes, support policy and provide a sound basis for informed decisions. The term life cycle refers to the notion that a fair, holistic assessment requires the assessment of raw material production, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal including all intervening transportation steps necessary or caused by the products existence. There are two main types of LCA. Attributional LCAs seek to establish or attribute the burdens associated with the production and use of a product, or with a specific service or process, at a point in time typically the recent past. Consequential LCAs seek to identify the environmental consequences of a decision or a proposed change in a system under study oriented to the future, which means that market and economic implications of a decision may have to be taken into account. Social LCA is under development5 as a different approach to life cycle thinking intended to assess social implications or potential impacts. Social LCA should be considered as an approach that is complementary to environmental LCA. The procedures of life cycle assessment LCA are part of the ISO 1. Directory. These lists can be used to obtain full name, work phone, position and email of facultystaff currently employed by Coe College. Coe College Information. Each Apache software project is managed by a Project Management Committee PMC, a selfselected team of active contributors to the project. ISO 1. 40. 40 2. ISO 1. ISO 1. ISO 1. 40. GHG product life cycle assessments can also comply with specifications such as PAS 2. GHG Protocol Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard. Four main phasesedit. Illustration of LCA phases. According to the ISO 1. Life Cycle Assessment is carried out in four distinct phases as illustrated in the figure shown to the right. The phases are often interdependent in that the results of one phase will inform how other phases are completed. Goal and scopeeditAn LCA starts with an explicit statement of the goal and scope of the study, which sets out the context of the study and explains how and to whom the results are to be communicated. This is a key step and the ISO standards require that the goal and scope of an LCA be clearly defined and consistent with the intended application. The goal and scope document therefore includes technical details that guide subsequent work the functional unit, which defines what precisely is being studied and quantifies the service delivered by the product system, providing a reference to which the inputs and outputs can be related. Further, the functional unit is an important basis that enables alternative goods, or services, to be compared and analyzed. So to explain this a functional system which is inputs, processes and outputs contains a functional unit, that fulfills a function, for example paint is covering a wall, making a functional unit of 1m covered for 1. The functional flow would be the items necessary for that function, so this would be a brush, tin of paint and the paint itself. Doing this is not easy and different methods may give different resultsand. Life cycle inventoryedit. This is an example of a Life cycle inventory LCI diagram. Life Cycle Inventory LCI analysis involves creating an inventory of flows from and to nature for a product system. Inventory flows include inputs of water, energy, and raw materials, and releases to air, land, and water. To develop the inventory, a flow model of the technical system is constructed using data on inputs and outputs. The flow model is typically illustrated with a flow chart that includes the activities that are going to be assessed in the relevant supply chain and gives a clear picture of the technical system boundaries. The input and output data needed for the construction of the model are collected for all activities within the system boundary, including from the supply chain referred to as inputs from the technosphere. The data must be related to the functional unit defined in the goal and scope definition. Data can be presented in tables and some interpretations can be made already at this stage. The results of the inventory is an LCI which provides information about all inputs and outputs in the form of elementary flow to and from the environment from all the unit processes involved in the study. Inventory flows can number in the hundreds depending on the system boundary. Mib88 Megamod Download Firefox. For product LCAs at either the generic i. At an industry level, care has to be taken to ensure that questionnaires are completed by a representative sample of producers, leaning toward neither the best nor the worst, and fully representing any regional differences due to energy use, material sourcing or other factors. The questionnaires cover the full range of inputs and outputs, typically aiming to account for 9. One area where data access is likely to be difficult is flows from the technosphere. The technosphere is more simply defined as the man made world. Considered by geologists as secondary resources, these resources are in theory 1. For an LCI, these technosphere products supply chain products are those that have been produced by man and unfortunately those completing a questionnaire about a process which uses a man made product as a means to an end will be unable to specify how much of a given input they use. Typically, they will not have access to data concerning inputs and outputs for previous production processes of the product. The entity undertaking the LCA must then turn to secondary sources if it does not already have that data from its own previous studies. National databases or data sets that come with LCA practitioner tools, or that can be readily accessed, are the usual sources for that information. Care must then be taken to ensure that the secondary data source properly reflects regional or national conditions. LCI MethodseditProcess LCAEconomic Input Output LCAHybrid Approach. Life cycle impact assessmenteditInventory analysis is followed by impact assessment. This phase of LCA is aimed at evaluating the significance of potential environmental impacts based on the LCI flow results. Classical life cycle impact assessment LCIA consists of the following mandatory elements selection of impact categories, category indicators, and characterization models the classification stage, where the inventory parameters are sorted and assigned to specific impact categories andimpact measurement, where the categorized LCI flows are characterized, using one of many possible LCIA methodologies, into common equivalence units that are then summed to provide an overall impact category total. In many LCAs, characterization concludes the LCIA analysis this is also the last compulsory stage according to ISO 1. However, in addition to the above mandatory LCIA steps, other optional LCIA elements normalization, grouping, and weighting may be conducted depending on the goal and scope of the LCA study. 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