Combined Life Cycle Assessment and Costing Analysis Optimization Model Using Multiple Criteria Decision Making in Earth-Resource Systems

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a comprehensive method to evaluate all attributes or aspects of potential environmental impact throughout a product’s lifecycle. Financial impacts are often added to the systemic evaluation process to reflect both environmental and economic assessment. For the specific application of LCA informing design of new technologies, when numerous variables are undecided or under defined, the process of forming an inventory of complete dataset is very difficult. Accumulating the early data consumes time, and limits application of LCA to new technologies and projects. As such, LCA may not normally be associated with forecasting or guiding a design/production process with an incomplete data set. Here, a life cycle assessment optimization model (LCAO) is described for incomplete data sets, based on the life cycle inventory (LCI) hybrid method and a modified multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach. The approach requires data, but can proceed in the given an incomplete or uncertain data set. The model of the algorithm also shows promising results to reveal previously unknown key variables within the dataset, which can then facilitate the minimization of environmental impact while maximizing economic benefits in product design.