Garvey Therese, Meyer David, Gonzalez Michael, Dyson Brian, Carriger John F
United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, 26 W Martin Luther King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268.
J Clean Prod. 2020 May 1;254:120036. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120036.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) provides holistic information on systems including the trade-offs between environmental impacts and the drivers of such impacts. Coupling life cycle assessment with a decision analysis (DA) method can help ensure that a life cycle assessment is focused on pertinent decision performance measures. In this paper, a framework integrating life cycle assessment with a decision analysis method to enhance the application of life cycle assessment is presented with a real-world case study of developing a material inclusion criterion for sustainable electronics standards. The proposed DA-LCA framework is a five-step process that tracks the flow of information between the steps of decision analysis and life cycle assessment. The case study considered the level of post-consumer-recycled or biobased content in laptop enclosures. Elicitation with a mock stakeholder panel was used to structure a means-ends network and create a utility-based influence diagram to link changes in material inclusion to environmental objectives using life cycle impact scores. Unlike typical life cycle assessment, the decision analysis approach allows for explicit incorporation of non-environmental factors and better constrains product options. Using this approach, the optimum decision for a possible range of 0-30% material content is 5% or 10%, depending on weighting. The DA-LCA framework can provide a blueprint for placing life cycle assessment results in context for decision-makers.
生命周期评估（LCA）提供了关于系统的全面信息，包括环境影响之间的权衡以及这些影响的驱动因素。将生命周期评估与决策分析（DA）方法相结合有助于确保生命周期评估聚焦于相关的决策绩效指标。本文通过一个制定可持续电子产品标准的材料纳入标准的实际案例研究，提出了一个将生命周期评估与决策分析方法相结合以增强生命周期评估应用的框架。所提出的DA-LCA框架是一个五步流程，跟踪决策分析和生命周期评估步骤之间的信息流。该案例研究考虑了笔记本电脑外壳中消费后回收或生物基材料的含量水平。通过与一个模拟利益相关者小组进行启发式询问，构建了一个手段-目的网络，并创建了一个基于效用的影响图，以利用生命周期影响得分将材料纳入的变化与环境目标联系起来。与典型的生命周期评估不同，决策分析方法允许明确纳入非环境因素，并更好地限制产品选项。使用这种方法，对于0-30%的材料含量范围，根据权重，最佳决策是5%或10%。DA-LCA框架可以为决策者将生命周期评估结果置于决策背景中提供一个蓝图。
