Comparison of software solutions for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) – a software ergonomic analysis

Abstract

Life cycle assessment of product systems is used to appraise their impact on the environment. A full life cycle assessment also requires the inclusion of intra-logistic transport processes or tools. For the LCA typi-cally a computer program is used. The demo versions of three commercial software solutions (SimaPro, GaBi, Umberto NXT LCA) and the full version of Open Source Software (openLCA) were analyzed in software ergonomic point of view. For this purpose replicas of the provided tutorials or own product systems were modeled. The interest points were • Development, distribution, target group, • Suitability of the tutorials, learnability, • Graphical user interface, individualized ability of the software, • Implementing the requirements of the standards of LCA, • Necessary steps for creating a life cycle assessment. The article includes an introduction to the essential principles of life cycle assessment and the principles of software ergonomics. They are subsumed to software ergonomic properties for LCA software. Later the results of the comparison are presented in the article. A summary of the findings closes the article.