Neue Aussagequalitäten der Stoffflußanalyse durch die Kombination mit Szenariotechnik und Parametervariation

Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in general and Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) in special are well-known and approved tools for the support of decisions in early design and development phases of products, systems or services. Based on a material flow analysis, LCE models the technical, economic and ecological consequences of a life cycle. Since these models include a huge amount of basic data, the use of computers and of special software systems is necessary. Most of the currently available software systems for LCA at least have a graphical component for the capture of material flows, a database with functions for the data management and a component for the calculation and the presentation of balances. But as LCE is a young scientific discipline, there still is a strong demand for functions supporting newest methodological developments (e.g. data quality indicators). The software tool GaBi 3 (IKP, University of Stuttgart and PE Product Engineering GmbH) is available since April 98 and takes this into account. Newest developments of GaBi 3 are the sankey-editor and the parametric process model including non-linear functions. These features are providing more flexibility of modeling and the possibility of parameter variation and scenario analysis.