A new method of patent analysis to support prospective life cycle assessment of eco-design solutions

Spreafico, Christian; Landi, Daniele; Russo, Davide

doi:10.1016/j.spc.2023.04.006

Cited by 50 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Therefore, future work is needed to include more factors, such as the model parameters and model structure. While the proposed method has already proved its usefulness in the hydrologic community, it also holds potential as a robust estimation tool in other domains, such as target tracking and assessing environmental sustainability [35,36]. For instance, the proposed method can be used to estimate the states and parameters of a maneuvering target by augmenting the state vector with model parameters.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanism Analysis and Demonstration of Effective Information Extraction in the System Differential Response Inversion Estimation Method

Chen,

Liu,

Jiang

et al. 2023

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The system differential response method for inverse estimation has received much attention in the hydrology literature. However, its underlying mechanisms remain largely unexplored, highlighting the need for this study. This study proposes the relation degree coefficient (RC) concept describing the nonlinear relationships between different variables and demonstrates that the selective information extraction ability of the method was first demonstrated from a theoretical perspective. Synthetic cases were conducted to demonstrate the method performance under various variables to be estimated. The results show that the useful information is extracted from the relationship between the variables to be estimated and the observed discharge. In addition, there is a general trend that suggests that incorporating more variables into the inversion estimation can lead to enhanced estimation performance.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanism Analysis and Demonstration of Effective Information Extraction in the System Differential Response Inversion Estimation Method

Chen,

Liu,

Jiang

et al. 2023

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, in traditional FMEA, the repercussions of failures refer to the health and safety of a generic user. In the environmental FMEA, they instead refer to present or future environmental impacts [13,14].…”

Section: Fmeamentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Intelligence Assisted Social Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) for Sustainable Product Design

Spreafico

Sutrisno

2023

Sustainability

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nowadays, the social dimension of product sustainability is increasingly in demand, however, industrial designers struggle to pursue it much more than the environmental or economic one due to their unfamiliarity in correlating design choices with social impacts. In addition, this gap is not filled even by the supporting methods that have been conceived to only support specific areas of application. To fill this gap, this study proposed a method to support social failure mode and effect analysis (SFMEA), though the automatic failure determination, based on the use of a chatbot (i.e., an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chat). The method consists of 84 specific questions to ask the chatbot, resulting from the combination of known failures and social failures, elements from design theories, and syntactic structures. The starting hypothesis to be verified is that a GPT Chat (i.e., a common AI-based chat), properly queried, can provide all the main elements for the automatic compilation of a SFMEA (i.e., to determine the social failures). To do this, the proposed questions were tested in three case studies to extract all the failures and elements that express predefined SFMEA scenarios: a coffee cup provoking gender discrimination, a COVID mask denying a human right, and a thermometer undermining the cultural heritage of a community. The obtained results confirmed the starting hypothesis by showing the strengths and weaknesses of the obtained answers in relation to the following factors: the number and type of inputs (i.e., the failures) provided in the questions; the lexicon used in the question, favoring the use of technical terms derived from design theories and social sustainability taxonomies; the type of the problem. Through this test, the proposed method proved its ability to support the social sustainable design of different products and in different ways. However, a dutiful recommendation instead concerns the tool (i.e., the chatbot) due to its filters that limit some answers in which the designer tries to voluntarily hypothesize failures to explore their social consequences.

show abstract

“…To be able to implement such "quality" requirements already in the design phase requires a prospective OEL assessment with a presumed efficiency progression curve like it was conducted for Case 2020 in the case study here. One way to achieve this could be, for example, a systematic approach that combines patent analysis and environmental aspects [89] to determine what future developments might look like.…”

Section: Case Study Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing Lifespan of Circular Products: A Generic Dynamic Programming Approach for Energy-Using Products

Hummen,

Hellweg,

Roshandel

2023

Energies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Slowing down replacement cycles to reduce resource depletion and prevent waste generation is a promising path toward a circular economy (CE). However, an obligation to longevity only sometimes makes sense. It could sometimes even backfire if one focuses exclusively on material resource efficiency measures of the production phase and neglects implications on the use phase. The (environmental) lifespan of circular products should, therefore, be optimized, not maximized, considering all life cycle phases. In this paper, a generic method for determining the optimal environmental lifespan (OEL) of energy-using products (EuPs) in a CE is developed, allowing the simultaneous inclusion of various replacement options and lifetime extension processes, like re-manufacturing, in the assessment. A dynamic programming approach is used to minimize the cumulative environmental impact or costs over a specific time horizon, which allows considering an unordered sequence of replacement decisions with various sets of products. The method further accounts for technology improvement as well as efficiency degradation due to usage and a dynamic energy supply over the use phase. To illustrate the application, the OEL of gas heating appliances in Germany is calculated considering newly evolved products and re-manufactured products as replacement options. The case-study results show that with an average heat demand of a dwelling in Germany, the OEL is just 7 years for climate change impacts and 11 years for the aggregated environmental indicator, ReCiPeendpoint(total). If efficiency degradation during use is considered, the OEL for both environmental impact assessment methods even lowers to 1 year. Products are frequently replaced with re-manufactured products to completely restore efficiency at low investment cost, resulting in higher savings potential. This not only implies that an early replacement before the product breaks down is recommended but also that it is essential to maintain the system and, thus, to prevent potential efficiency degradation. The results for cost optimization, as well as currently observed lifespans, vary considerably from this.

show abstract

A new method of patent analysis to support prospective life cycle assessment of eco-design solutions

Cited by 50 publications

References 48 publications

Mechanism Analysis and Demonstration of Effective Information Extraction in the System Differential Response Inversion Estimation Method

Mechanism Analysis and Demonstration of Effective Information Extraction in the System Differential Response Inversion Estimation Method

Artificial Intelligence Assisted Social Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) for Sustainable Product Design

Optimizing Lifespan of Circular Products: A Generic Dynamic Programming Approach for Energy-Using Products

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About