ACLCA 2025 Workshop: Advanced Techniques in LCA
ACLCA 2025 Workshop: Advanced Techniques in LCA
EarthShift Global’s Lise Laurin and Miguel Hernandez are joining Reed Miller of the University of Maine at ACLCA 2025 to guide a workshop on Advanced Techniques in LCA.
Too often, LCA practitioners shy away from projects with too much uncertainty or before a manufacturing process has reached maturity. They may simply assess an average or typical example, missing the opportunity to provide more nuanced advice. They may not know how to advise a client when there are significant trade-offs or provide broad guidance when there are many variables affecting the results. The ability to provide a higher level of support has the potential to enable decision makers to address the changes needed in this critical time. This workshop aims to help practitioners by sharing techniques that enable us to overcome these challenges.
Uncertainty
We’ll begin by exploring how to turn uncertainty from a challenge into an asset. Using what you do know, we’ll show how to set meaningful boundaries that highlight what truly matters. Attendees should bring examples that we can work on together.
Next, we’ll look at another side of uncertainty: decoupling quantity from flow. Sometimes we have uncertainty in how much of an input we use and other times we need to include the uncertainty about the secondary data we’ve chosen to model. In this section, we’ll talk about a way to incorporate both.
Underspecification
Keeping with the uncertainty theme, we’ll discuss underspecification. What do you do if you’re modeling a product that doesn’t exist yet and not all the decisions have been made? What if you don’t even know what material you’re going to use, or where the product will be made? Underspecification allows you to model under these conditions and then see which of the decisions are important and for which you can use other engineering criteria—like price or durability.
Stochastic Multi-Attribute Analysis (SMAA)
The next technique shifts from modeling to impact assessment and tackles how we handle trade-offs. Too often, even experienced practitioners set aside categories like ecotoxicity or acidification to focus on global warming. We'll introduce Stochastic Multi-Attribute Analysis (SMAA), a better way to compare products that doesn’t require us to turn a blind eye to other impacts.
Design of Experiments (DOE)
The last technique we’ll discuss encompasses both modeling and interpretation and can be used to assess a broader range of products. Design of Experiments, or DOE, enables us to model and then interpret over several variables. Say you are assessing a line of shirts, for example. DOE would enable you to evaluate a range of different sizes, colors, and fabrics. Then, with the use of other statistical tools as ANOVA (analysis of variance) it helps you to determine which variables most affect a specific impact category, and even which variable combinations produce the highest impact.
We’re looking forward to sharing these techniques with ACLCA 2025 attendees!
If you haven’t already signed up for our workshop, you can do so by clicking on the “Go to Dashboard” link at the bottom of your ACLCA conference registration.