2016 Volume 12 Issue 2 Pages 77-85
Objective. We propose a new method that can estimate transportation distance in order to enhance calculationof the Carbon Footprint of Products (CFP) even though detailed addresses are not known. When the detailed address of the origin and destination cannot be obtained because of business confidentiality or other reasons, this method substitutes an alternative address, representing an area in which the origin is located, for the detailed address. Using this method, we can control a degree of detail in the address.
Results and Discussion. It is often difficult to collect actual addresses for estimation of transportation distance due to business confidentiality and other concerns when calculating CFP. Our method, which estimates transportation distance with controlled precision, is designed in order to overcome these difficulties. Transportation distance is calculated with a web map service. Three address levels with different levels of accuracy are used in this paper. The three address levels are general areas, prefectural areas, and fine city-town areas. CFP data calculated with the proposed method are almost similar to those calculated with detailed address. We also show CFP data that are calculated with a rule of fixed transportation distance. The rule determines a fixed value as the transportation distance based on locations of origin and destination. The rule is often used in Product Category Rules (PCR). The data calculated using our method is closer to the calculated data of the detailed address than that calculated using the fixed transportation distance.
Conclusions. Our proposed method can estimate transportation distance when detailed addresses cannot be attained but a general area of the origin can be determined. The method shows better results than the conventional method described in the PCR.
