Recommendations for Life Cycle based Indicators for Sustainable Consumption and Production in the European Union

Public administrations in Europe need robust Sustainability Indicators to support the conception, development, implementation, and monitoring of policies. Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) is essential to ensure this, taking into consideration the environmental impacts along the whole life cycle of a product (both goods and services) in a single framework, irrespective of when or where they occur. This report summarises the outcomes of the 3rd International Life Cycle Thinking Workshop on Sustainability and Decoupling Indicators: Life cycle based approaches organised by DG JRC in Cyprus, in January 2007. More than 50 scientific experts and public administrators from 20 countries met to discuss whether, and how, to further integrate life cycle thinking into indicators in the contexts of decoupling and sustainability. Platform presentations, case studies and breakout groups recommendations are reported. The necessity for further developing existing Sustainability Indicators in relation to production, consumption, and waste, by integrating Life Cycle Thinking, was stressed by all participants. It was highlighted that the future developments must focus on providing meaningful, reliable, and consistent indicators that have a clear policy-support role, developed on solid methodological foundations to achieve broad acceptance.JRC.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource

The International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Format -Basic Concepts and Implementation of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) Method Data Sets

Abstract In the context of its efforts to facilitate environmental sustainability, the European Commission is promoting and supporting the use of life cycle data and tools through its European Platform on LCA. Objectives of this project are to develop the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook as authoritative guidance on LCA, to contribute key European scope quality data sets via the European Reference Life Cycle Database (ELCD) as well as to implement the ILCD Data Network as infrastructure for LCA data, open to all data developers. Both the ELCD database and the ILCD Data Network rely on the ILCD data format as reference format and for data exchange. In the initial release of the ILCD data format, only a draft specification for LCIA method data sets had been included, which has been enhanced and finalized in the meantime, addressing feedback from an earlier public stakeholder consultation process and reflecting insights when documenting the ILCD-recommended LCIA methods. The finalized ILCD method dataset specification is now implemented in software and will enable tools to easily import and apply new LCIA methods documented in the ILCD data format. In this paper, the new LCIA method dataset specification and its corresponding software implementation are presented. The history and idea behind the data format is briefly addressed as well as how the adoption among tools and databases is progressing. The basic structure of the ILCD data format is presented, with the different data set types and their relationships to each other. Then, the structure of the LCIA method data set and its modeling capabilities are explained. Furthermore, technical considerations for tool integration are discussed. Briefly, an exemplary LCIA method instance data set of a draft recommended LCIA method for Europe, foreseen for release by the European Commission's DG JRC, is presented to illustrate the use of the finalized dataset type implementation. Finally, an outlook on future developments is given

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Incident life cycle assessment : method for the quantitative assessment of the effects of non-intended operating states on humans, the environment and the availability of natural resources over the life cycle of products

Status: Quantitative Risikoanalysen (QRA) von Vorfällen einerseits und Produkt-Ökobilanzen andererseits werden bisher in der Praxis isoliert durchgeführt. Zur gezielten Entscheidungsunterstützung hinsichtlich der Relevanz von Vorfallauswirkungen über den Lebensweg von Produkten fehlt bisher eine allgemeine integrierte Methode ebenso wie zum integriert ökobilanziellen und vorfallbezogenen Vergleich von Produkten oder Technologien. Bisherige Arbeiten zur Integration beziehen lediglich bestimmte Arten von Vorfällen ein (z. B. Feuer während der Produktnutzung) oder nur bestimmte Auswirkungen (z. B. ausschließlich Todesopfer). Neben Unfällen werden in den entsprechenden Arbeiten andere Vorfälle nicht oder nur untergeordnet einbezogen. Zudem ist für eine Reihe methodischer Fragen bisher kein systematisches Vorgehen oder keine Formalisierung vorgestellt worden, einschließlich für die grundlegende Frage der systematischen, qualitativen und quantitativen Zuordnung von Vorfallauswirkungen zu den vorfallbeteiligten Prozessen und Produkten. Zielgruppe: Die Zielgruppe der hier vorgestellten neuen Methode der Lebensweg-Vorfallanalyse (LVA) sind einerseits Ökobilanz-Praktiker, die Wirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt aus nicht bestimmungsgemäßen Betriebszuständen (d. h. Vorfällen) umfassend und systematisch in ihre Analysen einbeziehen möchten. Andererseits sind dies Sicherheitsbeauftragte – bei Sabotage und terroristischen Bedrohungen auch Gefahrenabwehrbeauftragte genannt – und Qualitätsmanager, die die Auswirkungen von Vorfällen über den Lebensweg von Produkten erfassen und analysieren wollen. Methodik: Die Methode der Lebensweg-Vorfallanalyse (LVA) bringt bestehende Lösungen zusammen, passt diese an und stellt neue methodische Lösungen vor, die wichtige Lücken schließen. Die LVA nutzt dabei die modellierten Eintrittshäufigkeiten aus Fehlerbaumanalysen (FBA) und Ereignisablaufanalysen (EEA), die Vorfallausmaßinformationen aus QRA-Studien sowie Informationen aus Vorfallstatistiken und aus historischen Vorfällen. Die vorfallbedingten Inventare werden hierzu auf der Ebene des Sachinventars analog zur [Norm DIN EN ISO 14040:2009-11] und [Norm DIN EN ISO 14044:2006-10] der Ökobilanzierung erfasst und mit weiteren vorfallspezifischen Informationen in Einheitsvorfällen inventarisiert. In der Vorfallinventarisierung werden zusätzlich zu den – auch in der Ökobilanzierung üblichen – Interventionen umweltrelevanter und humantoxischer Emissionen sowie dem Verbrauch von natürlichen Ressourcen auch direkte Schädigungen von Menschen (insbesondere Tod, Verletzung und vorfallbedingte Berufskrankheiten) erfasst. Direkte Schädigungen von Menschen treten während bestimmungsgemäßer Betriebszustände definitionsgemäß nicht auf und werden bisher in der Ökobilanzierung nicht oder nur rudimentär erfasst. Die Vorfallauswirkungen werden in der LVA in Vorfallsystemen modelliert, die über Ereignisse in zentralen Einheitsvorfällen an die Module der Produktlebenswegmodelle quantitativ angebunden und skaliert werden. Zusätzlich zu den direkten Vorfallauswirkungen werden die Auswirkungen vorfallbedingter indirekter Vorfallfolgeaktivitäten erfasst, z. B. Vorfallbekämpfungsmaßnahmen, Evakuierungen, Aufräumung und Sanierung, Wiederherstellung zerstörter Güter usw. Die LVA erlaubt es – analog und konsistent zur Ökobilanzierung – an die Inventarisierung eine Wirkanalyse, Normierung und Gewichtung der Inventarergebnisse und vergleichende Auswertung anzuschließen. Methodisch wichtige Entwicklungen dieser Arbeit sind: • Definition qualitativer Zuordnungsregeln von Vorfällen zu Prozessen und Produkten und damit zu den (Prozess-)Modulen im Lebensweg. • Allgemeingültige Formalisierung der quantitativen Zuordnung der Vorfallauswirkungen und deren Skalierung bezogen auf die quantitativen Referenzen der vorfallbeteiligten Module. Dies beinhaltet methodische Lösungen zur quantitativen Zuordnung o unter Berücksichtigung produkteigenschaftsbedingter Auswirkungen, o bei unterschiedlicher Granularität von Vorfall und Modul, o bei Nutzung sowohl detaillierter QRA Ergebnisse als auch aggregierter Vorfalldaten und -statistiken und zudem o differenziert je nach Zielsetzung der LVA-Studie. • Adressierung der Frage der Modellierung von Vorfällen in „attributional“ und „consequential“ Studien. • Methodische Erweiterung und Kombination bestehender Lösungen zur LVA-Methodik für die Erfassung der Interventionen und direkten Personenschäden sowie deren Auswirkungen auf Mensch, Natur und Ressourcenverfügbarkeit aus nicht bestimmungsgemäßen Betriebszuständen über den Lebensweg beliebiger Prozesse und Produkte. Neben Unfällen können absichtlich herbeigeführte Vorfälle aufgrund von Terrorismus, Sabotage und anderer krimineller Akte sowie Selbstmord konsistent erfasst werden. In zwei Anwendungsbeispielen wird die Praktikabilität der Methode einschließlich Fragen der Datenerhebung und -schätzung erprobt und diskutiert. Ausblick: Wesentliche offene Punkte sind die breitere Erprobung der LVA einschließlich des Verbesserungspotenzial-Ansatzes als Methodenvariante, der Verwendung der vorgeschlagenen zusätzlichen Skalierungsfaktoren bei der Übertragung von Vorfalldaten auf ähnliche Prozesse und Produkte, die methodische Detailausarbeitung für die Erfassung von Ausschussproduktion und letztlich die Entwicklung von LVA-unterstützenden Vorfalldatenbanken und Softwarewerkzeugen.Status: Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) of incidents on the one hand and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of products on the other hand, are carried out so far in isolation. For a targeted decision support on the relevance of incident impacts throughout the life cycle of products, a general, integrated approach is lacking, same as for an integrated life cycle based, incident-related comparison of products or technologies. Previous work related to such an integration considers only specific types of incidents in the life cycle assessment (e.g. fires during product use) or only certain effects (e.g. exclusively fatalities). In addition to accidents, other incidents are not included or only in a subordinate manner. In addition, for several methodological issues methods or formalizations have not been presented so far, including for the fundamental question of the systematic, qualitative and quantitative assignment of incident impacts to the processes and products that are involved in an incident. Target group: The target group of the new method of Incident Life Cycle Assessment (ILCA) are on the one hand LCA practitioners that intend to systematically include the effects on humans and the environment from non-intended operating conditions (i.e. incidents) in a comprehensive and systematic manner into their analyses. On the other hand, these are safety officers - for sabotage and terrorist threats also called security officers - and quality managers who want to capture and analyse the impact of incidents throughout the life cycle of products. Method: The ILCA method integrates existing solutions and further develops them as well as provides new methodological solutions to overcome main gaps. The ILCA uses the modelled incident frequencies based on Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Event Tree Analysis (ETA), incident impact information from QRA studies, and information from incident statistics and from historical incidents. The incident impacts are initially recorded at the inventory level analogous in unit incidents (analogous to unit processes of LCA acc. to [Norm DIN EN ISO 14040:2009-11] and [Norm DIN EN ISO 14044:2006-10]), together with incident-specific information. In addition to direct consequences of the incident, indirect impacts that are caused by activities that are related to the incident are included, such as emergency response operations, evacuations, clean-up and rehabilitation, restoration of damaged assets, etc. In the incident inventory, also direct damage to persons (especially death, injury and incident-related occupational diseases) are inventoried, in addition to the interventions with the environment that are of relevance to the environment, human health and the depletion of natural resources and that are known from LCA. Direct damage to people does not occur during the intended operating conditions, per definition, and is hence not included in LCA or in a limited and simplified manner . In ILCA, the incident effects are modelled in incident systems that are quantitatively connected via events in the central unit incident to the incidence-related unit processes of the product life cycle model. The ILCA allows - analogous to and consistent with LCA – to perform an impact assessment, normalisation and weighting of the inventory results and a comparative evaluation. Methodologically important developments of this thesis are: • Definition of qualitative assignment rules of incidents to processes/products and thereby to the unit processes of the life cycle model • Generally applicable mathematical formalisation of the quantitative assignment of the incident impacts and the impact’s scaling relative to the quantitative reference of the unit processes to which an incident is assigned. This includes methodological solutions for the quantitative assignment of the impacts taking into account o product-property related effects, o different granularity of incident model and unit process, o using both detailed QRA results and aggregated incident data and statistics, and furthermore o differentiated according to the objective of the ILCA study. • Addressing the issue of modelling incidents in "attributional" and "consequential" studies • Methodological extension and integration of existing solutions, obtaining a methodology for capturing the interventions and direct harms to humans and the related effects on man, nature, and the future availability of natural resources, from non-intended operating conditions over the life cycle of any process and product. In addition to accidents, intentional incidents of terrorism, sabotage, and other criminal acts as well as suicide, are inventoried consistently. In two illustrative cases the practicality of the method is demonstrated and discussed, including issues of collecting and estimating data. Outlook: The main open issues are a wider testing of the ILCA, including of the improvement potential approach as a method variant, and of using the proposed additional scaling factors in the transfer of incident data to similar processes and products. Furthermore, the methodo-logical details of inventorying the impacts of faulty production wait to be worked out and the development of ILCA-supporting incident databases and software tools are open tasks

Concept and Implementation of the Internet Site on Life Cycle Assessment Tools, Databases and Services, and on Life Cycle Data in Support of the European Integrated Product Policy

The “European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EP-LCA)” is a project of the European Commission established by DG Environment and DG Joint Research Centre (JRC). It has the main goal to support and promote the application of life cycle thinking among stakeholders in the development of goods and ser-vices, and in facilitation of a broad range of policies and strategies. The Internet site on Life Cycle As-sessment tools, databases and services, and life cycle data, which is described in this paper, will in its final version be one of the main deliverables of the EP-LCA project. This web site will support and augment the activities of the EP-LCA by providing, in its first version, three main components: i) introductory in-formation about LCA, ii) the Commission’s database driven repository of Life Cycle Inventory data sets and Life Cycle Impact Assessment factors (i.e. the European Reference Life Cycle Data System, ELCD), and iii) a database driven comprehensive directory of third party LCA tools, databases, services and ser-vice provider descriptions.JRC.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource