LCA Evaluator: Software to help in the interpretation of LCA results

The LCA Evaluator is meanwhile quite an old software tool, developed by us in 2005 - but it is still unique and of interest. Its aim is to develop a recommendation in a comparative assertion with as little subjective judgement as possible.

Fundamental steps for conducting LCAs (goal and scope definition, inventory and impact assessment) are described by international ISO-standards in detail. The last step to perform is the evaluation where quantitative results of the LCA study are transformed into qualitative statements on environmental relevance of the analysed system.

During the evaluation, the LCA practitioner faces the following situation: a recommendation as clear as possible has to be given based on the sets of impact indicator values for each product alternative or scenario. But only in very few cases, data clearly favour one scenario. ISO-standard requirements on evaluation are rather general, scientific discussion on interpretation is still going on and recognized valuation and ranking methods are time consuming and complicate. Commercial LCA software does not offer much help on LCA interpretation.

The LCA-Evaluator is a unique tool that performs valuation of Life Cycle Assessment results, based on Life Cycle Impact Assessment categories in a simple, fast, user friendly and reproducible way. Manual normalization and ranking procedures are implemented exactly into the software. Thus, results are obtained analogously to manual evaluation methods but calculation is accelerated enormously. It is even possible to simulate the evaluation process for the implemented evaluation methods via Monte Carlo Simulation, and to put light on uncertainties in impact categories.

Technically, the tool consists of a Visual Basic program which connects to an Access database. Result reports for the evaluation runs are generated in Excel. See the right column for screenshots.

Different evaluation methods are implemented:

• Umweltbundesamt 1999: A method proposed by the German Umweltbundesamt, originally meant to be performed by an expert panel; and originally resulting in a report summarising the panel's decisions. The method compares LCA results from two different product alternatives. Criteria used are The pairwise comparison uses a T-diagram, it avoids a weighting of impact categories and uses grouping instead. The Umweltbundesamt calls this method 'verbal-argumentative Bewertung'.
• Umweltbundesamt 1996: The predecessor of the Umweltbundesamt 1999 method. It differs from the new method e.g. in the structure of the evaluated categories (UBA 1999 uses a 'distance to target'-criterion, which is as important as the ecological priority of an impact category, while in UBA 1996 it is only one aspect of ecological priority).
• Volkwein 1996: A method similar to the Umweltbundesamt methods; it applies a Hasse diagram ranking of different impact categories, and thus forces a pareto optimal ranking.
• HKKGAC: A method developed by Heiko Kunst, Karin Gerner and Andreas Ciroth; the basic idea is to allow only as much subjectivity in the evaluation as is needed (and wanted by the decision maker) to reach a conclusion. The method combines existing methods, from Umweltbundesamt and from Volkwein.

For requesting further information, or if you are interested in using the software, please send us an email.