Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
effects, fossil fuel depletion, and land use effects. The choice of which
impacts to use in a given study, however, is in the hands of the analyst.
Where only short-term product differentiation or “ecolabeling” is needed,
only a few selected impacts might suffice. Alternatively, a large number
of impacts for which the data are available might be used in a more
comprehensive analysis. Including additional impacts is only useful if
sufficient data is available to support them. Often, a sensitivity analysis is
undertakentoassessthemagnitudeofchangesinthefindingswhenselected
parameters in the LCA model are varied. It is an important addition to
the analysis; in fact, LCAs lacking explicit interpretation of the degree of
uncertainty are of limited value (Guo and Murphy, 2012).
The findings from LCA can be conveniently displayed as a simple radar or
polygon plot (see
Fig. 2.8
) where comparable products plotted on the same
set of scales allow a sustainability comparison to be made. Alternatively,
principal component analysis (Bersimis and Georgakellos, 2013) might be
used for a more elegant analysis.
