2013 Volume 9 Issue 3 Pages 189-205
Background and Objective. Since the early 1990s, a number of methods of life cycle impact assessment（LCIA）, including both midpoint and endpoint approaches, have been developed especially in European countries. For facilitating LCA practitioners’ thoughtful choices of methods, advantages and drawbacks of respective methods should critically and systematically be investigated. The objective of this series of articles is to review and compare the LCIA methods of the world so as to provide supportive information for LCA practitioners.
Results and Discussion. In this article, the definition of terminology relevant to LCIA is revisited among methods, especially between European and Japanese methods, and their methodological frameworks and impact categories comprised in those methods are summarized. Technical terms in English and their Japanese translations are provided side by side. Reviews and comparisons among the LCIA methods indicate that their frameworks and choices of impact categories are influenced, or sometimes restricted, by various conditions under which those methods have been developed. Those conditions include, not only practical reasons such as availability of characterisation models of impact categories, but factors directly linked to “goal and scope” of LCA such as motivation of method developments, adopted approaches of weighting steps, and environmental laws and regulations of countries where those methods have been developed.
Conclusions. Characteristics of the LCIA methods of the world are reviewed and compared from the viewpoint of their methodological frameworks. It is indicated that an appropriate method depends on the goals of LCA practitioners, which suggests that they should be careful in the choice of methods about the backgrounds of their frameworks.
