Using accrual accounting life cycle assessment as an indicator of urban sustainability

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Abstract

Over the past few decades, a growing number of qualitative and quantitative methods - such as echo-labels and urban metabolism - have been developed for environmental assessment of urban areas. Each of these methods has its advantages; however, none of them provides a solid framework which integrates life cycle thinking with multi-criteria and site-specific environmental assessment of an urban area. Recently, a few Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) practitioners have attempted to apply this robust methodology to urban areas to rectify the shortcomings of existing methods. However, methodological issues - such as definition of life cycle and functional unit of cities - as well as selection of appropriate system boundary hinder the application of LCA-based methods. This paper proposes using a well-known financial tool called accrual accounting along with life cycle impact assessment to provide a new framework for monitoring and evaluating environmental implications of urban areas. While keeping remarkable capabilities of LCA, the proposed method overcomes methodological problems and improves functionality of LCA-based assessment of urban environment.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Computing in Civil and Building Engineering - Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering

First Page

1934

Last Page

1942

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS