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If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.Abstract Presents a methodology for applying Quality Function Deployment (QFD) for environmentally conscious design in the early stage of product development. This methodology has been developed by incorporating environmental aspects into QFD to handle the environmental and traditional product quality requirements simultaneously. The``QFD for environment (QFDE)'' proposed consists of four phases. Designers can find out which parts are the most important in enhancing environmental consciousness of their products by executing QFDE phase I and phase II. Further, a methodology is developed to evaluate the effects of design improvement on environmental quality requirements as phases III and IV. The results obtained from the case study of IC package show that QFDE could be applicable in the early stage of assembled product design, because the most important component from the viewpoint of the environment is clearly identified and multiple options for design improvement are effectively evaluated.The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at

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In order to reduce vehicle emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs) on a global scale, the scope of consideration should be expanded to include the manufacturing, fuel extraction, refinement, power generation, and end-of-life phases of a vehicle, in addition to the actual operational phase. In this paper, the CO2 emissions of conventional gasoline and diesel internal combustion engine vehicles (ICV) were compared with mainstream alternative powertrain technologies, namely battery electric vehicles (BEV), using life-cycle assessment (LCA). In most of the current studies, CO2 emissions were calculated assuming that the region where the vehicles were used, the lifetime driving distance in that region and the CO2 emission from the battery production were fixed. However, in this paper, the life cycle CO2 emissions in each region were calculated taking into consideration the vehicle’s lifetime driving distance in each region and the deviations in CO2 emissions for battery production. For this paper, the US, European Union (EU), Japan, China, and Australia were selected as the reference regions for vehicle operation. The calculated results showed that CO2 emission from the assembly of BEV was larger than that of ICV due to the added CO2 emissions from battery production. However, in regions where renewable energy sources and low CO2 emitting forms of electric power generation are widely used, as vehicle lifetime driving distance increase, the total operating CO2 emissions of BEV become less than that of ICV. But for BEV, the CO2 emissions for replacing the battery with a new one should be added when the lifetime driving distance is over 160,000 km. Moreover, it was shown that the life cycle CO2 emission of ICV was apt to be smaller than that of BEV when the CO2 emissions for battery production were very large.

Background, aim, and scope Water scarcity is a critical environmental issue. In particular, domestic water is a necessary resource for our fundamental activities, and poor water quality may lead to damage to health caused by infectious diseases. However, there is no methodology to assess the damage of domestic water scarcity (low accessibility to safe water) caused by water consumption. The main objectives of this study are to model the health damage assessment of infectious diseases (ascariasis, trichuriasis, hookworm disease, and diarrhea) caused by domestic water scarcity and calculate damage factors on a country scale. Materials and methods The damage to health caused by infectious diseases was assumed to have resulted from domestic water scarcity due to loss of accessibility to safe water. Damage function of domestic water scarcity was composed of two steps, including assessments of water accessibility and health damage. This was modeled by applying regression analyses based on statistical data on a country scale. For more precise and realistic modeling, three explanatory variables (domestic use of fresh water, gross domestic product per capita and gross capital formation expenditure per capita) for water accessibility assessment and seven explanatory variables (the annual average temperature, the house connection to water supply, the house connection to sanitation, average dietary energy consumption, undernourished population rate, Gini coefficient of dietary energy consumption, and health expenditure per capita) for the health damage ssessment were chosen and non-linear multiple regression analyses were conducted. Results Water accessibility could be modeled by all three explanatory variables with sufficient explanatory power (R 2 =0.68). For the health damage assessment, significant explanatory variables were different from those for diseases, but the R 2 values of the regression models for each infectious disease were calculated as more than 0.4. Furthermore, the house connection to water supply rate showed a high correlation with every infectious disease. This showed that domestic water scarcity is strongly linked to health damage caused by infectious diseases. Based on the results of the regression analyses, the calculated damage factors of domestic water scarcity ranged from 1.29E-11 to 1.81E-03 [Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs)/m 3 ], and the average value (weighted mean value by domestic use of fresh water for each country) was 3.89E-07 [DALYs/m 3 ] and the standard deviation of damage factors was 1.40E-07 [DALYs/m 3 ]. Discussion According to the calculated damage factors for each country, countries sensitive to domestic water scarcity appeared to be located in the African region, and in addition, the amount of available domestic water tended to be less in the most sensitive countries. Water production technologies represented by desalination are expected to be a countermeasure for the reduction of water stress. As an example of the application of damage factor analysis, health damage improve...

According to the scope of the revision, the core part of the technical contents remains unchanged. Improved readability and the removal of errors and inconsistencies was the focus of the revision. However, despite the fact that the main technical content was confirmed to be still valid, some relevant formal and technical changes were made. On the technical side these include e.g. the addition of principles for LCA, the addition of an annex about applications, the addition of several definitions (e.g. product, process, etc.), clarifications concerning LCA intended to be used in comparative assertions intended to be disclosed to the public, clarifications concerning the critical review panel, clarifications concerning system boundary, etc. On the formal side, changes include the reduced number of standards, a reduced number of annexes, a reduced number of pages that contain requirements, alignment of definitions and clarification of compliance with the standards.

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