Page 185 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

10 Life Cycle Impact Assessment 171

Table 10.1 (continued)
Term Definition Source
Environmental Degree of linkage between category indicator result ISO (2006b)
relevance and category endpoints
Impact category Class representing environmental issues of concern to ISO (2006b)
which life cycle inventory analysis results may be
assigned
Impact pathway Cause–effect chain of an environmental mechanism
LCIA method Collection of individual characterisation models (each Hauschild et al.
addressing their separate impact category) (2013)
Midpoint Impact category indicator located somewhere along the Hauschild and
indicator impact pathway between emission and category Huijbregts (2015)
endpoint
Potential impact Relative performance indicators which can be the basis Hauschild and
of comparisons and optimisation of the system or Huijbregts (2015)
product
Technosphere The sphere or realm of human technological activity; Oxford Dictionary
the technologically modified environment of English

10.2 Mandatory Steps According to ISO 14040/14044

10.2.1 Selection of Impact Categories, Category Indicators
and Characterisation Models

The contents of this section have been modified from Rosenbaum, R.K.: Selection
of impact categories, category indicators and characterisation models in goal and
scope definition, appearing as Chapter 2 of Curran M. A. (ed.) LCA Compendium
—The Complete World of Life Cycle Assessment—Goal and scope definition in
Life Cycle Assessment pp 63–122, Springer, Dordrecht (2017).
The objective of selecting impact categories, category indicators and charac-
terisation models is to find the most useful and needed ones for a given goal. To
help guide the collection of information on the relevant elementary flows in the
inventory analysis, the selection of impact categories must be in accordance with
the goal of the study and is done in the scope definition phase prior to the collection
of inventory data to ensure that the latter is targeted towards what is to be assessed
in the end (see Chaps. 7 and 8 on Goal and Scope definition). A frequent difficulty
is the determination of the criteria that define what is useful and needed in the
context of the study. Some criteria are given by ISO 14044 (2006b), either as
requirements or as recommendations. The requirements are obligatory for com-
pliance with the ISO standard, and will therefore be among the focus points of a
Critical Review (see Chap. 13 on Critical Review). Some of these requirements and
recommendations concern LCA practitioners and LCIA method developers alike,
while others are most relevant for developers of LCIA methods and of LCA
software. The focus is here on the former, i.e. requirements concerning LCA
practitioners.