LCA studies require a high volume of data and their quality has a direct influence on the quality of the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study overall. The use of LCA databases enables users to (i) reduce time, efforts, and resources for data collection and (ii) reflect supply chains they have no direct control over. On the other side, it creates the need to align own modeling of the foreground LCA study with the modeling in the database. In recent years, countries worldwide have been more and more motivated in supporting LCA studies by providing national databases that reflect their economy, energy mix, and disposal technologies. This article aims to give insights on the main needs, requirements, and challenges for the creation of an LCA database, with a special focus on national, reference databases. First, the article defines the main characteristics of LCA datasets and discusses data collection approaches. Secondly, LCA databases are defined, and the creation of LCA databases from developed datasets is addressed, including the case of national LCA databases. Finally, the existence of tools that could ease the LCA dataset and database creation process is investigated, namely the LCA Collaboration Server and the LCA Data-Machine. It is important that countries willing to create a national database are supported, for example with capacity-building workshops, by actors with a long tradition in the field, which is of mutual benefit: Countries with a long tradition in LCA will benefit from interactions with newcomers, for instance by discussing together unsolved methodological and interoperability issues; newcomers do not need to start from scratch but can benefit from gained experiences. Creating databases that provide specific data for various parts of the world supports LCA methodology and application in general, and it is not the least a chance for local LCA communities to bring in innovation into LCA, and benefit from existing experiences at the same time.

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In recent years, increased interest and actions have been taken to better understand, and mitigate, sustainability impacts of mining activities, by both industry and policy. The present work reports on a sustainability hotspots screening performed for the EU Horizon 2020 “Integrated Mineral Technologies for More Sustainable Raw Material Supply” (ITERAMS) project, which foresees a more efficient water recycling, tailings valorization, and minimization of environmental footprint. The focus of this paper is on social and environmental issues in mining. Different methodologies were explored, starting from a qualitative causal loop modelling. Afterwards, an environmental and social LCA screening was performed using well-accepted databases and methods, thus completing results with a literature research. The main findings related to the importance of the supply chain, the vulnerability of local communities, and the toxic emissions from tailings offer a starting point to reflect on the specific social, socio-economic, and environmental context which may influence these issues. A better understanding of the environmental and social pressures associated with mining is not only crucial to orient the sustainability assessment foreseen for the ITERAMS project, but also to contribute in terms of methodology to the challenges tackled by policy and research worldwide towards a more sustainable mining.

This paper reports on a project for a senior citizens’ residence in the vicinity of Trento, Italy. The project constitutes the major part of a Master’s thesis in Architectural Engineering, developed at the University of Trento in Italy and at TU Vienna in Austria. The work entails a full account of environmental impacts during the life cycle of the building through LCA (Life Cycle Assessment). Furthermore, as buildings' end of life scenarios are insufficiently considered in most conventional LCA studies, the present contribution attempts to pursue a “cradle to cradle” approach (exploring a closed-loop flow of materials, energy, and resources) and to emphasize that the consequences of the choices made at the early stage of the design phase are critical for the subsequent stages of construction, use, maintenance, and end of life.The work consists of two parts. The first part relating to the architectural project involves careful consideration of the local characteristics of the site according to bioclimatic studies. In the second part, a comparative LCA study of different timber constructions and energy system options is presented, followed by a global LCA of the project. This aims at the estimation of the impacts of construction and end of life. Thereby, different possibilities are explored for reusing and recycling materials, such that disposal and incineration could be reduced as much as possible. Thus, the relative significance of different stages of the building construction, operation, and decommissioning can be explored.In conclusion, the paper offers a number of theoretical reflections on uncertainty analysis in LCA, addressing input assumptions (availability and quality of data) as well those regarding normalization and weighting factors. Thereby, the aim is to contribute to efforts toward a more pervasive application of the LCA methodology in the building design and delivery process.

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