An integrated approach for risk‐based life cycle assessment and multi‐criteria decision‐making

Abstract

/npsi/ctrl?lang=en http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/ctrl?lang=fr Access and use of this website and the material on it are subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth at http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/npsi/jsp/nparc_cp.jsp?lang=en NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRCThis publication could be one of several versions: author's original, accepted manuscript or the publisher's version. / La version de cette publication peut être l'une des suivantes : la version prépublication de l'auteur, la version acceptée du manuscrit ou la version de l'éditeur. For the publisher's version, please access the DOI link below./ Pour consulter la version de l'éditeur, utilisez le lien DOI ci-dessous.http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14637150610710927Business Process Management Journal, 12, 6, pp. 770-792, 2006-11-01 An Integrated approach for risk-based life cycle assessment and multicriteria decision-making -selection, design and evaluation of cleaner and greener processes Sadiq, R.; Khan, F. I. ABSTRACT Cleaner and greener technologies for process and product selection and design have gained popularity in recent years. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic approach that enables selection of cleaner and greener products and processes. Recently, significant progress has been made for the use of LCA for product/process evaluation and selection, however, its use in process design and environmental decision-making has not been fully exploited. There are challenging activities which require trade-offs among conflicting attributes like cost, technical feasibility and environmental impacts. These attributes can be analysed at the early design stage by considering the full life cycle of a process (and/or a product). A cleaner and greener process referred economical, technically feasible and environmental friendly alternative. This paper proposes an integrated methodology for design by combining LCA with multi-criteria decisionmaking. This methodology is simple and applicable at the early design stage and guide decisionmaking under uncertainty. Application of the methodology is demonstrated through a case study of urea production.

A survey of unresolved problems in life cycle assessment

“…In response, a variety of mathematical formalisms, also surveyed by Björklund (2002), have been proposed for use in uncertainty analysis, including, possibility distributions (Benetto et al 2005), upper and lower bounds with no distributional information (Pohl et al 1996), fuzzy intervals (Gonzalez et al 2002;Güereca et al 2007;Pohl et al 1996;Sadiq and Khan 2006), and information gaps (Ben-Haim 2006;Duncan et al 2007). None are clearly most appropriate for every uncertain phenomenon and every LCA scenario.…”

An integrated framework to support the process of green management adoption

“…Firms need new frameworks and tools that are able to overcome this lack of integration (Sadiq and Khan, 2006).…”

Towards More Holistic Environmental Impact Assessment: Hybridisation of Life Cycle Assessment and Quantitative Risk Assessment

“…Nevertheless, it has been recognised that a combination of LCA, QRA and MCDA may be useful as MCDA would complement LCA and RA. Since MCDA is capable of dealing with uncertain information [12,18], this approach many be beneficial especially for emerging technology such as nanomaterials where conventional risk assessment approach face challenges due to a paucity of data and more comprehensive approaches to predict the impacts of an entire life cycle are in high demand [18,24].…”