Page 115 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

5.4 The social assessment—S-LCA 111
efficiency of SRS of saving life and preventing damage may be different in different life
cycle stages.
The S-LCA was used as a management tool by Gabriella Arcese et al. (2013) in the tourist
trade in 2013. The potential adverse social impact was evaluated. The questionnaire was set
up on the basis of Guidelines. After analyzing the findings, the important factors of the social
impact of the tourist trade have been defined. In 2013, Gerva ´sio and Da Silva studied the user
cost of the social life cycle impact factors of the expressway bridge, separately. The user cost
was divided into the vehicle operating cost, the travel delay cost, and the accident cost. The
quantitative calculation models of three costs were provided.

5.4.1.4 Deficiency and prospect
Since Guidelines has been issued by UNEP/SETAC in 2009, the S-LCA has great progress
and development. But it is still in the primary level of development ( Jørgensen, 2013).
According to the publications above, there are some deficiencies of the S-LCA, being listed as:
(a) Data collection difficulties Some social impact assessment report and statistical yearbooks
of the related department can offer information, but the database is not enough. Data
collection is one of the most serious problems of the S-LCA (Benoıˆt et al., 2009). At present,
the most urgently needed S-LCA databases are modeling data and social impact data,
which leave researchers facing lots of difficulties.
(b) The absence of characterization models. Compared to the LCA, the S-LCA has a big
disadvantage, which is a lack of characterization models. For example, LCA can use the
characterization models to quantitatively unify the environmental impact as the human
injury eigenvalue (Guin ee et al., 2011), whereas S-LCA does not have such
characterization models.
(c) Can’t define the impact of the functional units. As indicated above, the result of S-LCA
can’t be quantified uniformly, due to the lack of characterization models. So, the impact of
each functional unit can’t be confirmed, which makes the range of application of the result
very limited (Hosseinijou et al., 2014).
(d) The absence of software. With the support of enough data, the software can make the
analysis of social spots and the simplification of inventory more reliable and simpler
(Lehmann et al., 2013; Benoıˆt et al., 2009).

5.4.2 Social impact and social impact assessment
5.4.2.1 Social impact
In the method of an S-LCA, the social impact will be defined as the impact of social relation
combined with a physical activity (production, consumption, and disposal) and actions taken
by stakeholders (Benoıˆt et al., 2009). The social impact is usually considered to be compli-
cated, which is the result of the system network and comes with different perspectives. In
addition, the social impact also has feedback effect on product systems, and the effect may
cause changes of social impact itself. Because of complexity and subjectivity of the social
impact, it is unsuited to unilaterally describe the state of product systems in an S-LCA. So,
a set of indicators is established from the stakeholders.