DEXiAqua, a Model to Assess the Sustainability of Aquaculture Systems: Methodological Development and Application to a French Salmon Farm

Aquaculture is increasingly considered a major contributor to the growing demand for worldwide seafood production. Sustainability is becoming a key issue for aquaculture systems, with the objective to produce seafood with lower environmental impacts and that is economically viable and socially fair. In the context of the SIMTAP project, a multi-attribute model called DEXiAqua was developed. DEXiAqua uses the DEX method to assess the sustainability of aquaculture systems via indicators from technical domains and reference methods (i.e., life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social life cycle assessment, and emergy accounting) selected and organized by the partners in the SIMTAP project. The DEX method consists of building an attribute tree that is organized to characterize a complex problem. Qualitative or quantitative indicators are measured at the end of each branch of the tree. The value of each indicator is translated into a qualitative scale for the associated attribute via threshold values. Weighted utility functions are used to build attributes from sub-attributes until the attribute of overall sustainability is reached. DEXiAqua was applied to a case study of salmon farming in France, which illustrated its ability to assess overall sustainability and help identify ways to improve the production system by identifying environmental, social, and economic hotspots. More case studies are required to apply DEXiAqua to a variety of systems with technical and contextual differences, which could result in changing attribute weights to adapt it better to different contexts

DETERMEEN - Prise en compte des contraintes spatiales et environnementales pour une approche systémique de l’insertion d’unités de méthanisation collectives au sein d’un territoire Livrable lot 1 : Cadre conceptuel pour le prise en compte de la spatialisation en analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) : le continuum de spatialisation

The present work package of the Determeen project aims to propose a new concept called “continuum of spatialization”. This methodological concept is designed to take into account the spatial information all over the LCA methodology (to design the scenarios, to assess the environmental; impacts, etc.).Le projet DETERMEEN a pour objectif la conceptualisation et l’opérationnalisation de la prise en compte de la différentiation spatiale en ACV que cela soit pour la modélisation des systèmes, l’évaluation de leurs impacts environnementaux notamment locaux et régionaux (toxicité, eutrophisation,…) ou l’identification des changements marginaux que les systèmes peuvent engendrer

Comment propager l'information spatiale en ACV ?

National audienceContext: Life Cycle Assessment is more and more used to assess the environmental impacts of various systems that implies methodological limits. Nevertheless, LCA sounds promising to help decision-makers at the territorial scale thanks to its holistic perspective. It however faces to limits among which the lack of spatial contextualization. Aim: For some systems, integrate spatial information is however necessary to ensure the contextualization and that all along the four methodological steps of LCA. In other words, spatial information should propagate from a step to another. In the following, a conceptual framework is proposed laying the foundations of such a homogenous and continuous integration of spatial information: the continuum of spatialization. Method: Based on a state-of-the-art on the use of spatial information in LCA, strengths, weaknesses and continuity of the existing solutions have been observed and are briefly presented here. Results: The continuum is based on existing solutions for each LCA step and links between steps. Then it consists in defining pathways to propagate spatial information all over the LCA framework. Conclusion: Theoretical and practical questions still remain for the continuum to be operational. In priority, a method to choose the appropriate level of spatialization in function of the studied system is required as well as couplings between LCA and GIS software

Différenciation spatiale ? Oui mais pas uniquement pour la caractérisation des impacts

International audienceLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) faces with spatial differentiation issues that have been discussed for years in LCA community. A 77 papers review reveals that the most commonly studied one is the lack of spatial consideration in the environmental impact characterization step and especially for local and regional impacts as eutrophication. This issue was the first to be identified by Potting and Hauschild (1997). More recently number of developments aim to include spatial and temporal information during the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) carrying out. If theorical methodologies are available for LCI and characterization steps, we only found practical ones for the two others LCA steps (Goal and scope definition and Results interpretation) despite identified issues (to overcome multifunctionality). This fact can be seen as a paradox as for the life cycle thinking and the iterative, holistic and global aspects of LCA. That is why we propose to develop a conceptual framework to consider the spatial differentiation all over the four steps of LCA in a continous and heterogeneous way. This framework is called “the spatialization continuum”. The first steps of the building of such a conceptual framework consist in the identification of the existing theorical and practical considerations of spatial differentiation in LCA and the potentiality to combine them towards a continous methodology. Two questions are explored: -For each step of LCA, what is necessary to ensure the spatial differentiation consideration? -What does a development on a precise step involve to the other ones? The conceptual framework also set the objective to examine different tools that appear to be indispensible when dealing with spatial information and their potential coupling with LCA methodology and practices. Among these tools, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are the most commonly used. However GIS appear not sufficient to overcome all the spatial differentiation related issues. In fact the spatialization continuum should ask for multiple external tools, methodologies or concepts. Therefore, the spatialization continuum materializes as a “multi-plugin” that will call for different solutions depending on the concerned issue and the required level of robustness. In this context, it differs from the classification of strategies to overcome LCA limitations proposed by Udo de Haes (2004): LCA extension, Hybrid LCA and Toolbox. We decided to call this new strategy the multi-plugin LCA.Besoin de différenciation spatiale tout au long des 4 étapes de l'ACV

Global warming impact assessment of urban mobility using motivation trip perspective - a case study of Saint-Etienne, France

International audienceThe anthropogenic origin of environmental impacts has become an increasing subject of interest during the last decades. Especially, the impacts of the transportation sector on Climate Change has been widely demonstrated and studied. Numerous methodologies have been proposed to calculate Greenhouse Gas emissions due to goods and passenger trips. This paper aims at proposing a methodology taken into account both the idea of trip motivation and indirect emissions of transportation. It proposes a case study: the trips of Saint-Etienne Metropole inhabitants during the week. If the results tend to confirm the major contribution of car in total GHG emissions, it also gives prominence to the disparities that occur when travelling one kilometre for one or another reason. These differences can originate from parameters that can vary in function of the motivation (such as the occupancy rates of transport modes) or from modal splits that also are peculiar to it

Methodology for multi-criteria analysis of urban mobility focused on trip motivations

International audienceEnvironmental Impacts of Commuter Trips using Motivation Perspective - a case study of Global Warming Impact in Saint-Etienne

Adapting life cycle assessment for multi-criteria analysis of a complex system: case study of urban mobility

http://berlin.setac.eu/embed/Berlin/Abstractbook1_Part2.pdfInternational audienceUrban mobility is identified as one of the most CO2 emitters in France: transport represents 34% of CO2 emissions in France in 2006 (ADEME 2006), including 25% of urban trip emissions. Some previous studies compare transport modes (Finkbeiner & Al. 2006), or assess CO2 emissions that are related to urban mobility on a real case (INSEE 2011). But literature is lacking about multi-criteria analysis of urban mobility in the general case. In particular, Life Cycle Assessment has not been largely used to qualify urban mobility impacts despite its possibility to evaluate the environmental impact (ISO14040, 2006). Nevertheless, the complexity of the system "urban mobility"is a first difficulty to the evaluation, especially concerning the definition of goal and scope. The main topic of this poster is to find out a way to complete and adapt LCA in order to enable the evaluation of a complex system under the case study of urban mobility. We propose an approach based on the System Analysis Design Technique (SADT) that allows a clear and complete definition of the "urban mobility"system. Then the possibility to include more societal indicators beyond the environmental ones (such as noise, satisfaction of consumers, time travel, costs etc) will be studied. The final aim is to provide a configurable dynamic system to evaluate different scenarios of urban mobility. The first results consist of a complete definition of the system that is based on a segmentation of urban mobility into sub-systems that constitute the "goal and objectives"step in LCA. This decomposition prepares to the next step of LCA, in which modal splits will be aggregated with elementary assessments of modes to obtain a multi-criteria analysis for several scenarios

De la nourriture à l'énergie: un continuum de spatialisation pour évaluer les impacts environnementaux des installations de méthanisation

International audienceMethodology and case study of spatial differenciation for eutrophication impact of digestate export.Méthodologie et étude de cas de la spatialisation de l'impact eutrophisation de l'export de digestat de méthanisation

Vers une plateforme d’évaluation environnementale (de durabilité) basée sur l’ACV : étude des besoins au sein du réseau ECOSD et prototype de couplage ACV-SIG Synthèse détaillée étude de cas

Development of a spatialized characterization factor for the calculation of the eutrophication impact in LCA.Développement d'un facteur de caractérisation spatialisé pour le calcul de l'impact eutrophisation en ACV

Territorial Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): what exactly is it about? A proposal towards a common terminology and a research agenda

Evaluating holistically environmental impacts of land planning policies implies to take into account several aspects, intimately related both to territorial features and to production-consumption patterns, which have a specific local character and a potential impact at different scales. To address these challenges, life cycle thinking and assessment methods are crucial. Indeed, beyond the traditional application of Life Cycle Assessment as a product-oriented methodology, a new LCA-based approach called “territorial LCA” has gradually emerged to assess geographically or administratively defined systems. This paper aims to analyze how this new LCA-based approach differs from conventional LCA, highlighting main differences and added values. Territorial LCAs can be divided into two main approaches, i.e., i) type A, which focuses on the assessment of a specific activity or supply chain anchored in a given territory, and ii) type B, which attempts to assess all production and consumption activities located in a territory, including all environmental pressures embodied in trade flows with other territories. These two approaches are described and compared according to the four LCA phases to highlight differences and similarities with conventional LCA. This comparison is based on a detailed case study analysis for each territorial LCA type and it shows that most of the differences are in the goal and scope definition, especially for the territorial LCA of type B where the functional unit definition is no more the starting point of the assessment. Concerning territorial LCA of type A, there are no main divergences with conventional LCA as territorial contextualization already exists in some LCA applications, even if not systematically applied. Improvements in the application may entail a comprehensive contextualization of the four LCA phases, developing the synergies with the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. Other specific challenges affecting both type A and B are related to i) territorial unique intrinsic multifunctionality determined by all human activities located within its boundaries, ii) specific territorial characteristics (i.e., spatial variability and organization), and iii) multiscale issues and the consideration of interactions between territories.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom