Proxy environmental impact data for under-specification methods from federal LCA commons data evaluated in open LCA and classified with ClassyFire

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Autori principali: Ellingboe, Ethan, Huang, Monica, Sultana Priyota, Azeezah, Simonen, Kathrina
Natura: Recurso digital
Pubblicazione: Zenodo 2026
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author Ellingboe, Ethan
Huang, Monica
Sultana Priyota, Azeezah
Simonen, Kathrina
author_facet Ellingboe, Ethan
Huang, Monica
Sultana Priyota, Azeezah
Simonen, Kathrina
contents <p>Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are essential for understanding the environmental impacts of material production. However, gaps in life cycle inventory (LCI) data for material and chemical inputs present a key challenge for LCA practitioners, especially in the early design stages. Strategies for filling in these gaps require additional time and expertise, which can hinder the LCA's completion. This study combined automatic material classification and probabilistic under-specification to create a time-efficient method to fill material LCI data gaps. To illustrate the proposed method, proxy environmental impact distributions were generated using publicly available material LCI data classified into the <em>ChemOnt</em> chemical taxonomy using the open-source chemical classification software <em>ClassyFire</em>. Input materials with data gaps were then classified into the same taxonomy, where proxy environmental impact values could be selected from the available distributions to quickly fill in any data gaps. Although these methods were applied to classify material production processes available in the Federal LCA Commons and Ecoinvent databases, they can be applied to any LCA database. This study shows that classifying materials by their chemical structure produces taxonomies with increased granularity relative to industrial classification, improving the ability of under-specified proxy data to be used for differentiating the environmental impacts of competing designs.</p>
format Recurso digital
id zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_19694242
institution Zenodo
language
publishDate 2026
publisher Zenodo
record_format zenodo
spellingShingle Proxy environmental impact data for under-specification methods from federal LCA commons data evaluated in open LCA and classified with ClassyFire
Ellingboe, Ethan
Huang, Monica
Sultana Priyota, Azeezah
Simonen, Kathrina
life cycle assessment
Data Gap
proxy data
chemical classification
probabilistic under-specification
<p>Life cycle assessments (LCAs) are essential for understanding the environmental impacts of material production. However, gaps in life cycle inventory (LCI) data for material and chemical inputs present a key challenge for LCA practitioners, especially in the early design stages. Strategies for filling in these gaps require additional time and expertise, which can hinder the LCA's completion. This study combined automatic material classification and probabilistic under-specification to create a time-efficient method to fill material LCI data gaps. To illustrate the proposed method, proxy environmental impact distributions were generated using publicly available material LCI data classified into the <em>ChemOnt</em> chemical taxonomy using the open-source chemical classification software <em>ClassyFire</em>. Input materials with data gaps were then classified into the same taxonomy, where proxy environmental impact values could be selected from the available distributions to quickly fill in any data gaps. Although these methods were applied to classify material production processes available in the Federal LCA Commons and Ecoinvent databases, they can be applied to any LCA database. This study shows that classifying materials by their chemical structure produces taxonomies with increased granularity relative to industrial classification, improving the ability of under-specified proxy data to be used for differentiating the environmental impacts of competing designs.</p>
title Proxy environmental impact data for under-specification methods from federal LCA commons data evaluated in open LCA and classified with ClassyFire
topic life cycle assessment
Data Gap
proxy data
chemical classification
probabilistic under-specification
url https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19694242