LCIA for SLCA

Question

Dear All,

I am using OpenLCA versio,n 2.0.0 and Psilca V3.1 developper raw values no cut of.

I implemented the LCI of a product however I cannot access any Impact Assessment method that seems suitable for Social LCA when using "Calculate" from a "Product system".

Should I import them ? If yes where could I find the methods ?

EDIT : There is one present, the "Social Impacts Weighting Method", It is only present in the "Working hour" version

Thanks for the answer and have a good days.

Leon

Answer 1

Hi Leon,

good question, the simple LCIA method that exist so far for social LCA has the only function to aggregate the different risk-assessment classes (low risk, medium risk, high risk, ..) into one figure per indicator. For the direct calculation, this is not needed as you do not have different risk levels but are already at one result per indicator. Therefore, a specific LCIA method does not exist here. However, this shows that there could be a task left for developing a maybe more integrated LCIA method that combines different indicators..

All the best,

Andreas

Comments

Hello Andreas,
However I saw that in some documentation and some other version of OpenLCA (V1.10) for example, you can use the "Social Impacts Weighting Method".
Do you know where I can find this one ?
Leon

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Hm I doubt this was referring to th eraw values version. You could create this yourself, the difficulty is in developing suitable weighting factors for different indicators, and in developing suitable normalisation values prior to weighting, for all indicators.

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Dear Andreas,
Ok but according to the documentation of Psilca V3.1 at page 96 there is such a method available,
else how would I compute the social impact of my product once I have implemented my LCI?
Thanks and have a good day.
Leon

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Hi Leon, this is for the activity variable (worker hour calculation), and the only purpose is to aggregate the different risk levels per indicator. So the output of this is a result per indicator, that you also receive from the direct calculation already. After this it would be possible to aggregate further, with weighting and normalisation, but then you would need to say that e.g. forced labour is e.g. 5 times more important than unemployment etc.