A concept for graph-based LCA analysis tool

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment is a comprehensive life cycle approach that quantifies ecological and human health impacts of a product or system over its complete life cycle [5]. The existing LCA and environmental assessment tools do not model the relations between different lifecycle factors or different environmental dimensions and focus mostly on the inventory analysis. The main idea of the proposed concept is to develop environmental assessment tools in order to evaluate the environmental performance and deliver a dynamic environmental profile for products, services and processes, by taking into account the various dimensions of environmental impact, as well as the relations between different factors in their lifecycle. Furthermore, this concept proposes a graph-based representation of different lifecycle factors and dimensions in order to facilitate the visual analysis and simulation of the product/service/process lifecycle. Finally, this concept provides a way to model environmental KPIs as a representation to different lifecycle factors and a simulation environment.