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Conclusions and Outlook.The present framework will offer the practitioner the choice to use either midpoint or damage indicators, depending on modelling uncertainty and increase in results interpretability. Due to the collaboration of acknowledged specialists in environmental processes and LCIA around the globe, it is expected that -after a few years of effort -the task forces of the Life Cycle Initiative will provide consistent and operational sets of methods and factors for LCIA in the future. and damage-oriented methods aiming at more easily interpretable results in the form of damage indicators at the level of the ultimate societal concern (e.g. human health damage). The Life Cycle Initiative, a joint project between UNEP 1 and SETAC 2 , proposes a comprehensive LCA framework to combine these families of methods. The new framework takes a world-wide perspective, so that LCA will progress towards a tool meeting the needs of both developing and developed countries. By a more precise and broadly agreed description of main framework elements, the Life Cycle Initiative expects to provide a common basis for the further development of mutually consistent impact assessment methods.

Institute 0fTechnology and Yale University Volume 2. Number 2 I SummaryThe lack of spatial differentiation in current life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) affects the relevance o f the assessed impact.This article first describes a framework for constructing factors relating the region of emission to the acidifying impact on its deposition areas. Next, these factors are established for 44 European regions with the help of the RAINS model, an integrated assessment model that combines information on regional emission levels with information on long-range atmospheric transport to estimate patterns o f deposition and concentration for comparison with critical loads and thresholds for acidification, eutrophication via air; and tropospheric ozone formation.The application of the acidification factors in LCIA is very straightforward.The only additional data required, the geographical site of the emission, is generally provided by current life-cycle inventory analysis.The acidification factors add resolving power of a factor of 1,000 difference between the highest and lowest ratings, while the com-