Page 148 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

132 3 Life Cycle Inventory Analysis

(unfortunately) cannot be found within the freely accessible reports also belongs
to the product. The most recent version appeared in 2013. 154)
• GaBi (University of Stuttgart and PE International, DE) is based on fundamental
work on LCA at the University of Stuttgart. 155) This database is particularly highly
recommended by the engineering sector and has, from the beginning, considered
the interests of the auto mobile industry, its suppliers and its producers of raw
material. GaBi is both a database as well as an LCA software.
• SimaPro (Pr´ e Consultants, NL) 156) is the most distributed LCA software worldwide.
It also implements extensive databases. Which reached a new dimension by
the cooperation with ecoinvent. SimaPro is also known for a specific impact
assessment (‘eco indicator’), 157) which, however, according to ISO 14040, can only
be applied for internal use if comparative assertions are concerned.
• Umberto (Ifu, DE) 158) was developed by ‘ifu Hamburg – material flows and soft-
ware’ in cooperation with the Institute for energy and environmental research in
Heidelberg (IFEU), and is primarily a software for flows of material, energy and
mass analyses plus price calculations and is also well suited for LCAs. Umberto
also implements a database for standard unit processes.

3.4.4
Estimations

The most unpleasant experience for an LCA practitioner is the absence of any data
for a material, a construction element, a chemical, or an agricultural process, and
if the information needed cannot or will not be provided by the industry. In this
case there are two possibilities:

• omission of the process or
• introduction of estimations.

The latter is preferable despite of all uncertainties 159) , because otherwise – if not an
insignificant sub process is concerned – the less examined system would always
do better (the missing cooperation of manufacturers would be rewarded; offence
of the symmetry principle). Possible ways of estimation are with:

• Older data or data from other geographical areas (other system boundaries),
• Data of chemically similar compounds, materials, and so on,
• Estimations based on information in technical manuals. 160)

154) A supplement issue of International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment about the most recent
version 3 of ecoinvent is in preparation (2013).
155) University Stuttgart, IKB and PE International; Eyrer, 1996; Spatari et al., 2001; http://www.gabi-
software.de.
156) http://www.pre.nl/software.
157) Goedkoop, 1995; Goedkoop et al., 1998.
158) http://www.umberto.de.
159) Fleischer, 1993; Hunt et al., 1998.
160) Bretz and Frankhauser, 1996.