Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan
Online ISSN : 1881-0519
Print ISSN : 1880-2761
ISSN-L : 1880-2761
Research Article
Development of Water Footprint Inventory Database Using Input-Output Analysis in Japan
Yuya ONOKen HORIGUCHINorihiro ITSUBO
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JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2013 Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 108-115

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Abstract

Objective. Water Footprint (WF) can be expressed as total amount of water consumed through entire life cycle of products. The principle and procedure for water footprint have been discussed in the process of making the draft of international standard. According to the draft, various elementary flows like, quantity of water used, type of water resource, form of water use, geographical location of water withdrawal and return flow are mentioned to be considered in water inventory. In particular, the type of water resource and form of water use are not distinguished in most of the existing LCI database. The purpose of this study is to develop water footprint inventory database which will make it possible to account consumed water amount with the differentiation in type of water resource and form of water.
Results and Discussion. LCI database on water considering the type of water resource and the form of water consumption was developed by applying input-output analysis (403 sectors) in this study. More volume of water tends to be consumed in primary industries. In secondary industries, food processing and wood processing require large amount of water consumption because of the larger indirect demand for water consumption by the primary industries in upstream of supply chain. Most of the sectors in tertiary industries indirectly consume water through demand for water supply sector. The results of water footprint of rice production based on the database developed in this study were compared with those existing two different database and confirmed that all of them were consistent in the total amount of consumed water but the breakdown of water resource types was different among the results based on each database. This difference is due to climate.
Conclusions. The output of this study, database of water inventory includes the following items; water consumption amount from each water resource (rain, river and groundwater). This database enables us to carry out water footprint following the requirements in ISO standard draft.

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© 2013 The Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan
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