What Users Want and May Need

Abstract

Summary An increasing number of software tools support designers and other decision makers in making design, production, and purchasing decisions. Some of these tools provide quantitative information on environmental impacts such as climate change, human toxicity, or resource use during the life cycle of these products. Very little is known, however, about how these tools are actually used, what kind of modeling and presentation approaches users really want, or whether the information provided is likely to be used the way the developers intended. A survey of users of one such software tool revealed that although users want more transparency, about half also want an easy‐to‐use tool and would accept built‐in assumptions; that most users prefer modeling of environmental impacts beyond the stressor level, and the largest group of respondents wants results simultaneously on the stressor, impact potential, and damage level; and that although many users look for aggregated information on impacts and costs, a majority do not trust that such an aggregation is valid or believe that there are tradeoffs among impacts. Further, our results show that the temporal and spatial scales of single impact categories explain only about 6% of the variation in the weights between impact categories set by respondents if the weights are set first. If the weights are set after respondents specify temporal and spatial scales, however, these scales explain about 24% of the variation. These results not only help method and tool developers to reconsider some previous assumptions, but also suggest a number of research questions that may need to be addressed in a more focused investigation.

Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment—A Survey Based Potential Future Development for Implementation and Interpretation

“…Education and experience could also provide an explanation for conspicuities in particularly young and particularly old age groups: for example, it appears that the equivalent execution of the three pillars is more challenging for younger (18-29 years) and older experts (>60) than for the average respondent, and the definition of equivalent system boundaries is more complex for younger (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29) and older (>60) respondents.…”

“…Jusselme et al [20] investigated the use of LCA (only; not LCSA) in practice among architects, engineers, consultants and real estate developers. In the framework of this publication, previous studies are named which dealt with surveys and LCA use [20][21][22][23][24]. The objective of the research by Jusselme et al was to introduce the life-cycle performance assessment (LCPA) to practitioners.…”

“…Further focusing on correlations from educational background, working sector and age; the equivalent execution of the three pillars seems to be more challenging for the consulting sector and for younger (18-29 years) and older experts (>60) than for the average respondent; data availability is named by almost all experts as partly challenging, except for those working in industry (more challenging); in particular, data availability in S-LCA seems to be more challenging for industry and consulting than for university staff or employees of research institutes; defining equivalent system boundaries is more challenging for younger (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29) and older (>60) age groups; and in the interpretation and presentation of the results of LCSA, the consulting sector mentioned increased challenges.…”

Proposal of life cycle-based environmental performance indicators for decision-making in construction.

“…Furthermore, the data required for normalizing LCA results have considerable uncertainty (STEINMANN et al, 2016;VAN HOOF et al, 2013), and weighing is difficult to agree upon (HOFSTETTER; METTIER, 2003). Although single scores can be easier to communicate to a broader audience, they prevent decision-makers from understanding the causes of the different environmental impacts and identifying opportunities for action (BAITZ et al, 2013;HOFSTETTER;METTIER, 2003). Source: the author..…”