Taxonomy of uncertainty in environmental life cycle assessment of infrastructure projects

Abstract

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to evaluate infrastructure products and to inform their funding, design and construction. As such, recognition of study limitations and consideration of uncertainty are needed; however, most infrastructure LCAs still report deterministic values. Compared to other LCA subfields, infrastructure LCA has developed relatively recently and lags in adopting uncertainty analysis. This paper presents four broad categories of infrastructure LCA uncertainty. These contain 11 drivers focusing on differences between infrastructure and manufactured products. Identified categories and drivers are: application of ISO 14040/14044 standards (functional unit, reference flow, boundaries of analysis); spatiotemporal realities underlying physical construction (geography, local context, manufacturing time); nature of the construction industry (repetition of production, scale, and division of responsibilities); and characteristics of infrastructure projects (agglomeration of other products, and recurring embodied energy). Infrastructure products are typically large, one-off projects with no two being exactly alike in terms of form, function, temporal or spatial context. As a result, strong variability between products is the norm and much of the uncertainty is irreducible. Given the inability to make significant changes to an infrastructure project ex-post and the unique nature of infrastructure, ex-ante analysis is of particular importance. This paper articulates the key drivers of infrastructure specific LCA uncertainty laying the foundation for future refinement of uncertainty consideration for infrastructure. As LCA becomes an increasingly influential tool in decision making for infrastructure, uncertainty analysis must be standard practice, or we risk undermining the fundamental goal of reduced real-world negative environmental impacts.

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