You are here:
Research Area 7: Life Cycle Inventories and Methodologies
Citation:
Ingwersen, W. Research Area 7: Life Cycle Inventories and Methodologies. Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) SHC Subcommittee Meeting, Research Triangle Park, NC, April 02 - 12, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
To provide a background and overview of plans for the Research Area 7 from SHC draft strategic research action plan (stRAP) to the BOSC SHC subcommittee.
Description:
Research Area 7 will address the problems associated with the increasing usage of materials and generation of waste associated with production and consumption of good and services and their extensive supply chains. It has two areas of concentration, the US environmentally-extended input-output model (USEEIO) and waste estimation. USEEIO is a national scale model that can calculate a set of environmental impact, resource use and economic indicators related to ~400 goods and services. USEEIO underlies the EPA OLEM Sustainable Materials Management Tool Suite and is now in use by government, research, corporate and nonprofit entities. We propose to build on work completed in FY2014-2018 to create USEEIO, creating a family of models for different users, such as state models; extend the model structure to capture more physical flows in the form of physical input-output tables; globalize the model to better represent imported commodities and track exports including waste; create the capacity to perform scenario analysis. Waste generation and disposition estimates are important values published by EPA and widely-used, including in the USEEIO model. We propose to improving these estimates and expanding the waste types covered will increase their quality,transparency and comprehensiveness. We further propose to more closely integrate these data into USEEIO models.