Corrected and improved aggregations of the regionalised Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method for water scarcity AWARE are available for download via our download section.
AWARE is a regionalised Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method for water scarcity in openLCA. AWARE quantifies the relative Available WAter REmaining per (specified) area after satisfying the demand of aquatic ecosystems and anthropogenic activities. Aim of AWARE is to assess the extent to which water users in an area are at risk of water scarcity. The findings are translated into a characterisation factor (CF) that ranges between 0.1 and 100. The characterisation factors can be utilised for calculating the water scarcity footprint in accordance with ISO 14046*.
AWARE is the result of a two-year consensus building process developed by WULCA, a working group of the UNEP SETAC Life Cycle Initiative. AWARE is used for instance within the Environmental Footprint Initiative of the European Commission for Product Environmental Footprints (PEF).
Regionalized LCA in OPENLCA
Regionalized LCIA evaluate environmental impacts for a specific area in which an impact occurs. This is for instance relevant for freshwater consumption because freshwater is a resource which is limited to a specific watershed. To calculate regionalized impacts, openLCA processes spatially referenced data (shapefiles/*.shp). A process’ location can be specified by selecting from predefined polygons (e.g. countries) as well as by drawing polygons using openLCA’s build-in KML editor or by importing polygons**.
Download the AWARE LCIA method for openLCA
The AWARE LCIA method for openLCA is available on the openLCA download page under Impact methods. A short documentation of AWARE in openLCA is available here.
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Further reading:
* Boulay Anne-Marie, Jane Bare, Lorenzo Benini, Markus Berger, Michael J. Lathuillière, Alessandro Manzardo, Manuele Margni, et al. “The WULCA Consensus Characterization Model for Water Scarcity Footprints: Assessing Impacts of Water Consumption Based on Available Water Remaining (AWARE).” The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 23, no. 2 (February 2018): 368–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-017-1333-8.
** Rodriguez, C., and A. Ciroth. “Regionalized LCIA Implementation in LCA Software for Decision-Making Analysis in LCM.” Poster presented at the 7th International Conference on Life Cycle Management – LCM 2015, Bordeaux, 2015. https://www.greendelta.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/LCM2015_Regionalization_in_openLCA_Rodriguez.pdf.