1,720,966 research outputs found
Development and testing of a new life cycle assessment method for the monetary evaluation of water scarcity impacts
Full text linkConsidering goods for which no market exists (i.e. clean air, freshwater, rainforests, etc.) if on the one hand it is quite simple to quantify them in physical units, on the other hand it seems difficult to give them an economic value, especially when considering their related environmental impacts. Even if international standardize methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) may support practitioners in performing environmental assessments, because of its intrinsic nature of tool able to provide mainly a biophysical impact characterization the LCA methodology alone to date is not sufficient to provide monetary information about environmental impacts. Existing methods and approaches aimed to give monetary value to environmental impacts and aspects, particularly those focused on water resource, are still absent or very limited by data availability and time-spatial characterization issues, resulting in an almost total absence of consistent economic LCA based indicators focused on water scarcity impacts. The aim of the present research was thus the development and testing of a new Life Cycle Assessment method for the monetary evaluation of water scarcity impacts. The research core was the development of specific monetary characterization factors to convert water consumption related impacts into monetary terms, adopting principles from the theory of the LCA methodology and considering also some economy-related parameters. The resulting new developed method was validated according to sensitivity analysis at different levels and then it was successfully tested in four different real case studies. To be applied the new proposed method was imported into the LCA software SimaPro adopted to process data of each product system collected on the field. Finally, a hotspots analysis of results was performed demonstrating the effectiveness and the applicability of the new proposed method, highlighting also its sensitivity to different real productive contexts and to different existing water scarcity impact assessment methods. Concluding, the new developed method for the monetary valuation of water scarcity impacts provides a simpler framework when compared to the existing monetary methods whose application in LCA is usually limited to few environmental aspects, requiring often significant people involvement to perform surveys and analysis needing a huge amount of time. However, further improvements such as the integration of water qualitative aspects, additional validation procedures and testing in other productive contexts need to be investigated in order to increase the accuracy and the capacity of the proposed method to generate consistent results.Considerando i beni per cui ad oggi non esiste un vero e proprio mercato (es. aria pulita, acqua dolce, foreste pluviali, ecc.) se da un lato una loro valutazione in termini quantitativi appare abbastanza semplice, dall'altro risulta complesso potergli attribuire un valore economico, in particolar modo quando si considerano i relativi impatti ambientali. Sebbene l'adozione della metodologia di valutazione del ciclo di vita LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), normata a livello internazionale, possa supportare la conduzione di valutazioni di impatto ambientale, trattandosi di uno strumento in grado di fornire principalmente una caratterizzazione dei potenziali impatti in termini biofisici, tale metodologia da sola ad oggi non è sufficiente a fornire informazioni di tipo monetario sugli impatti ambientali. I metodi e gli approcci esistenti orientati a conferire un valore monetario ad aspetti e impatti ambientali, in particolare quelli incentrati sulle risorse idriche, sono ancora in via di sviluppo e fortemente limitati dalla disponibilità di dati e problemi di caratterizzazione spazio-temporale, risultando in una quasi totale assenza di indicatori economici consistenti basati sulla metodologia LCA e focalizzati in particolare sugli impatti derivanti da scarsità idrica. Lo scopo della presente ricerca è dunque quello di sviluppare e testare un nuovo metodo per la monetizzazione degli impatti da scarsità idrica basato sull'analisi del ciclo di vita. La ricerca si è concentrata sullo sviluppo di specifici fattori di caratterizzazione monetaria per convertire gli impatti relativi al consumo di acqua in termini monetari, adottando una combinazione di principi derivanti dalla teoria della metodologia LCA e di parametri economici. Il nuovo metodo sviluppato è stato convalidato tramite un'analisi di sensitività condotta su più livelli ed è stato testato con successo in quattro diversi casi studio reali. Per poter essere applicato, il nuovo metodo proposto è stato importato nel software di analisi LCA SimaPro, impiegato per elaborare i dati di inventario di ciascun sistema prodotto raccolti sul campo. Infine, è stata effettuata un'analisi dei risultati ottenuti, dimostrando l'efficacia e l'applicabilità del nuovo metodo proposto ed evidenziando la sua sensibilità ai diversi contesti produttivi e ai diversi metodi esistenti in letteratura finalizzati alla valutazione dell'impatto sulla risorsa idrica. Concludendo, il nuovo metodo sviluppato per la valutazione monetaria degli impatti sulla scarsità idrica rappresenta uno strumento più semplice rispetto ai metodi monetari esistenti la cui applicazione in campo LCA è solitamente limitata a pochi aspetti ambientali e che richiedono, inoltre, il coinvolgimento di un elevato numero di soggetti e di lunghi tempi per poter condurre le indagini. Tuttavia, ulteriori miglioramenti al metodo sviluppato nella presente ricerca, come l'integrazione di parametri qualitativi dell'acqua, procedure di validazione aggiuntive e test condotti in altri contesti produttivi, possono essere investigati al fine di valutare la possibilità di incrementare il livello di accuratezza e la capacità del nuovo metodo proposto di generare risultati consistenti
Mapping diffusion of Environmental Product Declarations released by European program operators
Full text linkIn order to facilitate the adoption of green requirements in public procurement, European Commission has developed the Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria for various typologies of products and services. Almost all GPP criteria require environmental labels as means of proof that the goods or supplies correspond to the required environmental characteristics. Among the labels required, there are type III labels, based on a life cycle assessment study. The aim of this study is to (i) investigate to what extent a specific type III label, called Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), is spread in Europe and (ii) explore whether there is a correspondence between institutional initiatives towards GPP and the market. This study explored the valid EPDs presented on the websites of the European program operators between September and December 2016. The identified EPDs were quantified and classified according to the programme operator, title of the reference Product Category Rule (PCR), country, language and the product based on a classification system developed by the United Nations. In total, 4,888 EPDs were collected mainly released by the Institut Baum und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) and PEP ecopassport (PEP). The obtained results showed that countries with the greater number of EPDs are France and Germany and that construction products are the types of products labelled most. The analysis of the languages used in the EPDs showed that 45% of the identified EPDs are written in local languages. The obtained results have been cross-referenced with the national situations in terms of presence of National Action Plans (NAPs) and mandatory rules regarding GPP. Our analysis revealed that there is correspondence between the presence of a NAP with principles towards GPP and the spread in the market of environmental labelling and that the product sectors covered by EPDs correspond to the sectors covered by GPP criteria
Carbon footprint analysis of mozzarella and ricotta cheese production and influence of allocation procedure
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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