The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasing in all economic sectors, in policy and in public procurement.  The quality and credibility of LCA-studies strongly depends on transparent Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) datasets.

The sharp increase in demand for LCA in the last years has not yet led to a corresponding increase in available LCI datasets. In other words, the datasets from LCA studies that could be used by many other actors for further work are rarely integrated into publicly available LCI databases.

The development of transparent, up-to-date or time representative, reproducible, quality controlled and consistent datasets is indispensable for reliable LCA-studies. Nevertheless, dataset developments and more generally discussions on background data tend to be somehow left behind by the LCA development. Collaborative data collection and/or dissemination platforms are now largely deployed in many other domain. In the domain of LCA there are only a few emerging projects based on collaborative data collection.

This Discussion Forum aims at drawing a panorama regarding publicly available LCI data It also aims to discuss innovative solutions relying on collaborative, transparent and open-source concepts and their contribution to quality and credibility of LCI data and LCA.

In a nutshell, the forum will address the following topics:

• Data acquisition for LCA today and in the future – Situation, needs and challenges;
• Trends to foster and ease the data collection and quality control processes;
• Initiatives, emerging concepts and successful examples for collaborative work in data gathering;

Finally, a workshop will be proposed to participants to collect ideas and needs regarding the future development in data collection and quality assurance in the LCA domain.

We look forward to meeting you in Zürich

Pierryves Padey

Swiss Federal Office for the Environment

Programme:  DF84-Programme.pdf

Videorecordings are available for free via this link: https://video.ethz.ch/events/lca/2023/autumn/84rd.html