Leiden University Scholarly Publications

Verones, F.; Hellweg, S.; Assumpció, A.; Azevedo, L.B.; Chaudhary, A.; Cosme, N.; ... ; Huijbregts, M.A.J. 2020

LC-IMPACT: a regionalized life cycle damage assessment method

Article / Letter to editor

open access

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many... Show moreLife cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many of these advancements are scattered throughout the scientific literature, making it difficult for practitioners to apply the new models. Here, we present the LC-IMPACT method that provides characterization factors at the damage level for 11 impact categories related to three areas of protection (human health, ecosystem quality, natural resources). Human health damage is quantified as disability adjusted life years, damage to ecosystem quality as global species extinction equivalents (based on potentially disappeared fraction of species), and damage to mineral resources as kilogram of extra ore extracted. Seven of the impact categories include spatial differentiation at various levels of spatial scale. The influence of value choices related to the time horizon and the level of scientific evidence of the impacts considered is quantified with four distinct sets of characterization factors. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method with an illustrative life cycle assessment example of different fuel options in Europe (petrol or biofuel). Differences between generic and regionalized impacts vary up to two orders of magnitude for some of the selected impact categories, highlighting the importance of spatial detail in LCIA. This article met the requirements for a gold - gold JIE data openness badge described at . Show less

Steubing, B.R.P.; Koning, D.G. de; Haas, A.; Mutel, C.L. 2019

The Activity Browser — An open source LCA software building on top of the brightway framework

Article / Letter to editor

open access

The Activity Browser is an open source software for advanced Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The Activity Browser provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to the brightway LCA framework and makes... Show more

The Activity Browser is an open source software for advanced Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The Activity Browser provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to the brightway LCA framework and makes common tasks such as managing projects and databases, modeling life cycle inventories, and analyzing LCA results easier and more intuitive. In addition, it provides advanced features for LCA modeling and data analyses and thus facilitates state-of-the-art LCA research. It can be extended to implement novel LCA modeling approaches and analyses as needed.

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Pauliuk, S.; Majeau-Bettez, G.; Mutel, C.L.; Steubing, B.R.P.; Stadler, K. 2015

Lifting industrial ecology modeling to a new level of quality and transparency: a call for more transparent publications and a collaborative open source software framework

Article / Letter to editor

open access

Industrial ecology (IE) is a maturing scientific discipline. The field is becoming more data and computation intensive, which requires IE researchers to develop scientific software to tackle novel... Show moreIndustrial ecology (IE) is a maturing scientific discipline. The field is becoming more data and computation intensive, which requires IE researchers to develop scientific software to tackle novel research questions. We review the current state of software programming and use in our field and find challenges regarding transparency, reproducibility, reusability, and ease of collaboration. Our response to that problem is fourfold: First, we propose how existing general principles for the development of good scientific software could be implemented in IE and related fields. Second, we argue that collaborating on open source software could make IE research more productive and increase its quality, and we present guidelines for the development and distribution of such software. Third, we call for stricter requirements regarding general access to the source code used to produce research results and scientific claims published in the IE literature. Fourth, we describe a set of open source modules for standard IE modeling tasks that represent our first attempt at turning our recommendations into practice. We introduce a Python toolbox for IE that includes the life cycle assessment (LCA) framework Brightway2, the ecospold2matrix module that parses unallocated data in ecospold format, the pySUT and pymrio modules for building and analyzing multiregion input-output models and supply and use tables, and the dynamic_stock_model class for dynamic stock modeling. Widespread use of open access software can, at the same time, increase quality, transparency, and reproducibility of IE research. Show less