Impact assessment methods overview
To perform the impact assessment, various scientific LCIA methods exist. Depending on goal and scope of your study and other aspects, specific methods are used. Here we provide a small overview of most common methods and the impacts they cover:
| Water Use | Energy Use | Land Use | Acidification | Climate Change | Resource Depletion | Ecotoxicity | Eutrophication | Human Toxicity | Ionising Radiation | Ozone Layer Depletion | Particulate Matter | Photochemical Oxidation | Latest or Original Source | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWARE | ✓ | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Boulay et al. (2018) |
| CED | - | ✓ | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Frischknecht et al. (2007) |
| IPCC | - | - | - | - | ✓ | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | IPCC (2021) |
| USEtox 2 | - | - | - | - | - | - | ✓ | - | ✓ | - | - | - | - | USEtox (2016+) |
| ReCiPe | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Huijbregts et al. (2017) |
| Environmental Footprint | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | JRC (2022) |
| CML | - | - | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - | ✓ | Guinée et al. (2002) |
| TRACI | - | - | - | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - | ✓ | - | ✓ | Bare (2021) |
As displayed above, some impact methods only cover one specific impact category but represent also the fundation of other methods, e.g. IPCC is used in the Environmental Footprint method.