Ontology based social life cycle assessment for product development

Abstract

Social life cycle assessment is an important method to assess products' social impacts throughout their life cycles. There are already some indicators and software to assist conducting social life cycle assessment. However, it is hard for users to share or reuse assessment results because of different application data structures. To resolve this problem, a knowledge-based social life cycle assessment-aided design method is developed in this research. With this method, all elements in the social life cycle assessment process are analyzed and represented as classes, their relationships are described as object properties, and the data structure is represented as data properties to construct an ontology system for social life cycle assessment. Based on the ontology, a social life cycle assessment-aided product development web is developed. According to the data property structure, a bidirectional mapping between database and ontology is realized using JENA and ontology-based data access, which enables the result data to be automatically inputted into ontology individuals. Thus, the result data can be accumulated, shared, and reused among users. A case study with a floor product as well as a user test is carried out to prove the feasibility and usability of the web. The ontology-based social life cycle assessment-aided design method provides users with a new high-efficiency approach, setting the foundation for the intellectualization of life cycle assessment.

Social life cycle assessment for industrial product development: A comprehensive review and analysis

“…As an alternative to the UNEP guidelines, S-LCA methodologies have been developed from private initiatives. In the scientific literature, there are proposals for frameworks [ 44 , [61] , [62] , [63] , [64] , [65] , [66] ], methodologies with new indicators and category analyses [ [67] , [68] , [69] , [70] ], integration of social and environmental analyses [ 48 , 62 , [71] , [72] , [73] , [74] ] and specific methodologies for industrial products [ 12 , 13 , 46 , 53 , [75] , [76] , [77] , [78] , [79] ]. As a reference, the Handbook for Product Social Impact Assessment (PSIA) [ 80 ] and the SEEbalance © method stand out.…”

Social Life Cycle Assessments: A Review on Past Development, Advances and Methodological Challenges

“…In contrast, 67 publications (60%) tested the inclusion of positive impacts in different ways (Figure 5, right). Out of those, 9% (six publications) cluster indicator-set into positive and negative ones and thereby define which impact (sub-)categories are considered to have a positive or negative overall impact [107][108][109]. Another 17% (12 publications) provide theoretical discussions about the importance, definition or assessment of positive impacts in, for example, literature reviews [104,110].…”

Systematic Map of the Social Impact Assessment Field

“…Socio-economic assessment 75% [6,8,27,31,33,41,45,47,50, Social, economic and environmental 11% [89][90][91][92][93][94] Novel approach 9% [54][55][56]95,96] Social and environmental 5% [44,97,98]…”