Life-cycle assessment is a widely used tool to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product or service throughout its life cycle and to guide product design and policy decisions. However, the current life-cycle assessment framework and databases do not account for the environmental impacts from unintentional release of chemicals and other substances due to accidents, spills, or leaks. Unintentional substance release incidents are not rare events and instead happen on a daily basis. Ignoring these risks in environmental assessments may lead to biased results and short-sighted decisions. This research project aims to develop a critically needed new framework and database to incorporate potential unintentional substance release risks and impacts into life cycle based environmental assessments. Undergraduate and graduate students will receive training on cutting-edge environmental assessment methods. This research project also aims to implement an education program to provide materials on risk- and life cycle-based environmental sustainability assessment to students, decision makers, and the general public. Well-designed and tested educational games are targeted to help the general public to better understand environmental sustainability and to culture a system thinking mindset for K-12 students. An open-source tool and online learning materials are aimed at educating life-cycle assessment practitioners and decision makers on risk-modified life-cycle assessment.
This research project aims to identify the unintentional substance release risks in the product life cycle, to characterize unintentional substance release impacts for selected case study substances, and to apply risk-modified life-cycle assessment for policy analysis. The developed risk-modified life-cycle assessment framework would enable the consideration of potential unintentional substance release risks at the product design or policy planning phase. Such a framework would also better inform decision making and lead to more sustainable development solutions at lower economic, environmental, and social costs to society. Freely available, open-source tool, database, and online learning materials would encourage the scientific community to apply the risk-modified life-cycle assessment framework to address additional risks and gradually develop better risk-modified life-cycle assessment databases collectively.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
