Automation Approach for Life Cycle Assessment Integrated Data and Mapping Quality Assessment (DMQA)

Life cycle assessment (LCA) as defined by ISO 14040 and 14,044 is designed as an iterative approach to stepwise improve data quality until the required quality for the goal of the study has been reached. This paper proposes an approach to automate the quality assessment required for deciding on potentially necessary quality improvements in the next iteration step. The approach focusses on the mapping of secondary LCA datasets for background system analysis (also known as Scope 3 analysis in terms of the greenhouse gas (GHG) protocol). It takes the quality of three types of data into account: (1) The quality of the primary data describing the material, energy, and product flows to be modeled; (2) the quality of the secondary data these flows are to be modeled with; and (3) the quality of the mapping decisions for connecting the two data sources. The approach comprises the quality descriptions for the three data types as well as the automatic computation and visualization of the quality scores along with the computation of environmental impacts. The visualization is implemented in an interactive dashboard tool that allows for explorative analysis of the environmental impacts in relation to quality of the underlying data and decisions. The approach is demonstrated in a realistic use case based on experience from real industry cases in the field of purchased electronic components.