ATTENTION! The pages of the workshop are completely in English language!
After the workshop has taken place succesful on October 20th to 21rst the organisers want to thank all the participants for coming and having so many fruitful and lively discussions about quality of LCI data!
Results of the discussions will be presented soon.
The Presentations are already available under the subtopic 'presentations' as pdf-files!
This workshop under the auspices of the "UNEP/SETAC-Life Cycle Initiative" in its programme "Life Cycle Inventory" is aimed at pushing forward the discussion and common sense on LCI quality criteria, their measurement, documentation, communication, and application in decision support in LCA practice.
The different nature (qualitative, quantitative) and level (elementary flow, unit process, product system) of LCI uncertainty information results in a challenging task to provide adequate information on data quality and representativeness both to supply high quality information and aggregate it towards higher levels within LCA studies. The rising demand for high-quality LCI data in various application fields led to numerous approaches addressing data quality, representativeness, and appropriateness - extending from qualitative descriptions to stochastic methodologies. Decision-makers and decision supporters therefore face a multitude of - in parts controversial - quality criteria and measures, which complicates the selection of LCI data and interpretation of the reliability of LCA results based upon them. Communication and transfer of data to and amongst practitioners is even more difficult due to different ways of quality reporting.
With the aim of contributing to a guideline document for a structured quality measurement, documentation, and application, LCA practitioners in industry, academies, and consulting, LCI data providers and government agencies are invited to convene and discuss contentious issues within three working groups (see programme).
Three topics have been selected for the different working groups:
Topic A: Quality Criteria and Measurement
Subtopics: Criteria for data sets, methodology and uncertainty; criteria for databases, methodology, consistency, and reliability; subjective and objective methodology and modeling choices; quantitative vs. qualitative measures; stochastic vs. systematic errors.
Topic B: Documentation and Communication of Quality Information
Subtopics: Interaction of LCI and LCIA uncertainty; application fields and data appropriateness; technical needs and solutions for documentation, communication, and reporting; integration of data of different origin
Topic C: Application of Data Quality Information in Decision-Making
Subtopics: Integration of data with different appropriateness & quality; significance of results, reliability of decision support; data quality vs. transparency
At present, a number of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases are available and widely used by LCA practitioners, and several new database development projects are being carried out or planned in an increasing number of countries. For all these databases it is highly important to develop harmonized indicators and measurement procedures for data quality in order to give an orientation to LCA practitioners. Therefore, an international process for addressing quality issues of LCI data sets and databases and a 3rd party peer review has been proposed in the LCI Definition Study of the UNEP/ SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. This workshop on "Data quality" is jointly coordinated by Marc-Andree Wolf (IKP, University of Stuttgart, Germany) and Christian Bauer (FZK, Germany) and forms a basis for the above-mentioned activities to come.
The identified task links directly to the two following objectives of the UNEP/ SETAC Life Cycle Initiative:
- Enhancement of the availability of sound LCA data and methods.
- Provision of guidance on the use of LCA data and methods.
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany; University of Stuttgart, IKP, Germany; German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF); European Commission - Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC); National Resources Canada (NRCan), Canada; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), France
- Liselotte Schebek, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany (chair)
- Raul Carlson, Chalmers University of Technology IMI, Sweden
- Alain Dubreuil, NRCan, Canada
- Matthias Finkbeiner, DaimlerChrysler, Germany
- Rolf Frischknecht, ecoinvent Centre, Switzerland
- Atsushi Inaba, AIST, Japan
- Greg Norris, Harvard University, USA
- Toolseeram Ramjeawon, University of Mauritius, Mauritius
- Tomas Rydberg, EC-JRC, Italy
- Guido Sonnemann, UNEP, France
- Bernhard Swarbrick, NiDi, Canada
- Bo Weidema, 2.-0 Consultants, Denmark
- Marc-Andree Wolf, University of Stuttgart, IKP, Germany