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Consensus building on the development of a stress-based indicator for LCA-based impact assessment of water consumption: outcome of the expert workshops
Citation:
Boulay, A., J. Bare, C. De Camillis, P. Döll, F. Gassert, D. Gerten, S. Humbert, A. Inaba, N. Itsubo, Y. Lemoine, M. Margni, M. Motoshita, M. Núñez, A. Pastor, B. Ridoutt, U. Schencker, N. Shirakawa, S. Vionnet, S. Worbe, S. Yoshikawa, AND S. Pfister. Consensus building on the development of a stress-based indicator for LCA-based impact assessment of water consumption: outcome of the expert workshops. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. Springer-Verlag, BERLIN-HEIDELBERG, Germany, 20(5):577-583, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
A series of three expert workshops, including non-LCA experts from hydrology, eco-hydrology, and water supply science, was organized specifically on the topic of this generic midpoint indicator. They were held in Zurich on September 10th, in San Francisco on October 5th and in Tsukuba on October 27th, 2014. In total 49 experts attended. The specific objectives of the workshops were twofold. First, it was to present the identified options of the stress-based indicator narrowed down by the active members of WULCA during the first eight months of the project and to receive comments on the relevance, usefulness, acceptability, and focus of the selected indicator. Second, the workshop covered different challenges in the modeling of the indicator, and presented the experts with background information and specific questions. This paper summarizes the discussions and outcome of these workshops. Where no agreement was reached, the working group of active members is considering all inputs received and continues the work.
Description:
The WULCA group, active since 2007 on Water Use in LCA, commenced the development of consensus-based indicators in January 2014. This activity is planned to last 2 years and covers human health, ecosystem quality, and a stress-based indicator. This latter encompasses potential deprivation of both ecosystem and human, hence aiming to represent potential impacts more comprehensively than any other available LCA-oriented method assessing the “water scarcity footprint” (ISO 2014).
