Chalmers Conferences, LCM 2013

STATISTICAL APPROACH TO HANDLING UNCERTAINTY IN LCA
Ananda K. Sekar, PS. Sreenivasan, S. Sivakumar, Utpal M. Vakil, Shyamal Gondkar

Last modified: 2013-06-25

Abstract


LCA has been widely used for assessment of environmental performance of product life cycles. Whenever LCA is used in environmental evaluation of alternatives, it is critical for target audience to know the uncertainties associated with reported impacts. This work aims at proposing approaches that companies can adopt to make statistically valid evaluation of alternatives. Another key objective is to conclude if universal “difference thresholds” can be set for claims. For instance, is 10% lower carbon footprint of a product against competitive product adequate for a statistically valid claim? Monte Carlo and Parametric bootstrapping techniques have been used for the proposed approaches. This study also concludes that setting universal “difference thresholds” may not be statistically valid all the time.

Keywords


LCA; uncertainty; communication; bootstrapping; Monte Carlo

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