A review about methods for supporting failure risks analysis in eco-assessment

Abstract

This paper critically reviewed 106 scientific papers proposing methods to enrich eco-assessment with failure determination and risk assessment. The provided research perspective is new and significantly different from the reviews in the literature which are mostly limited to analyse the environmental impacts of uncertainties and off-design functioning rather than the failures. The analysis, based on the contributions of the literature over more than 20 years, was carried out manually and allowed to identify and classify the application fields, the types of identifiable failures and the approaches used for their determination, for the analysis of their risk of occurrence and for their eco-assessment. The different classifications have also been intersected with each other and all the proposed approaches have been discussed in detail, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages in relation to eco-assessment. From the study emerged a growing and heterogeneous interest on the subject by the scientific community, and a certain independence of the analysed methods with respect to traditional approaches of both failure risk analysis and eco-assessment. Great attention of the methods about product functioning has been highlighted, in addition to the use of tests, simulations, FMEA (failure mode and effect analysis)-based approaches and knowledge databases to determine the failures, while statistical methods are preferred to support risks analysis and LCA (life cycle assessment) for environmental impact calculation. If, in the coming years, this argument also spreads in industry, the results provided by this review could be exploited as a first framework for practitioners. Graphical abstract

S-FMECA: A Novel Tool for Sustainable Product Design - Additive Manufacturing

“…Spreafico [32] reviewed 106 scientific papers proposing methods available in literature for over 20 years, identifying failures and assessing their hazards during eco-assessment. From the study emerged, a growing interest in the methods related to the product functioning for supporting failure risk analysis in ecoassessment by the scientific community.…”

S-FMECA Based Collaborative Design Proposal for Additive Manufacturing Methodology

“…From the review study conducted by Spreafico [32], there appeared a growing interest in the methods related to the product functioning for supporting failure risks analysis in eco-assessment. The Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a multi-criteria approach, largely used in manufacturing industries in different phases of the product life, inter alia in the design stage, as an effective and consistent risk assessment method in order to improve production and design [33].…”

Hidden-mortality risk among patients deemed “low-risk” following high-risk operations

“…Hidden-mortality risk among patients deemed "low-risk" following high-risk operations Yongliang Sun 1 , Wenquan Niu 2 , Zhiying Yang 1 assume the relative independence of examined factors that is often not tenable in real scenarios (8). A practical way to overcome this challenge is the adoption of more advanced big data-based machine-learning techniques, which was the approach adopted by Sahara et al (4).…”