LCA Links!

This week, the most widely attended and foremost conference for LCA is being held in Seville, Spain.  The SETAC Europe conference hosts the most progressive and active subjects related to LCA methodological development and application.

This year’s SETAC Europe LCA topics include:

Life Cycle Inventories – footprinting and critical reviews – posters

Life Cycle Inventories – footprinting and critical reviews - session

Life cycle management and putting life cycle thinking into practice - posters

Life cycle management and putting life cycle thinking into practice - Session A

Life cycle management and putting life cycle thinking into practice - Session B

Life cycle sustainability analysis - posters

Life cycle sustainability analysis – sessions

New Developments in LCIA – Poster

New developments in LCIA – Session A

New developments in LCIA – Session B

New developments in LCIA – Session C

Strengthening uncertainty analysis in LCA – Session

A launching event of the USEtox ^TM model will be held at the SETAC Europe conference on Tuesday, May 25th in Seville, Spain.

This model has been developed by a team of international scientists for assessment of human and ecotoxic impacts from chemicals in life cycle impact assessment and for ranking of chemicals according to their inherent hazard characteristics. At the launch, a representative from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and a representative from the USEtox ^TM team will give a brief welcome and presentation of the USEtox ^TM model (15 min). The remaining time is allocated to informal talks with members of the USEtox ^TM Team and demonstration of the USEtox ^TM model, and for networking with LCA and chemical assessment colleagues. There will be posters and hand-out material about the model.

LCA-software companies that have integrated the USEtox ^TM characterization factors for human toxic and ecotoxic impacts into their software have been invited to demonstrate these facilities at the event.

If you wish to attend, please confirm your participation usetox@usetox.org

The UNEP/SETAC Database Registry: A global repository for finding and offering LC-related datasets of high quality, is finally available in a draft website with search and upload capabilities, here:

http://lca-data.org.

An advisory council has been formed, and several well-known, important institutes and personalities agreed to join.  A workshop will be held in conjunction with the upcoming SETAC congress in Seville, Spain (http://seville.setac.eu), on May 25th, 2010.

Room “Italica” Time: May 25th, 17:15 – 18:45; The meeting room is within the SETAC Europe conference; if you will not be attending the conference, visitor badges will be made available.

Aim of this workshop is to show and fine-tune the current capabilities of the Registry, and to plan a long term maintenance. There will be internet access in the room, and the Registry and website functionality will be demonstrated live. The workshop will be free of charge.

The following agenda is proposed:

The UNEP/SETAC Database Registry: A global repository for finding and offering LC-related datasets of high quality

• Welcome and introduction
• Status
  • - website and search engine
  • - advisory board
• Development points
  • a) Interaction
    • - user interaction (what should users be allowed to do, and what do they expect)
    • - data provider interaction (ditto)
  • b) Presentation of results, how?
    • - search engine results
    • - any other results (user input, …)
  • c) the “open source” section of the Registry
  • d) Continuing with the Registry
    • - funds
    • - community: Moderators, data providers, …
• The Registry in light of other developments
  • - global database harmonisation workshop
  • - ELCD
  • - format converter
• Summary and outlook

The “2-day technical seminar on toxicity aspects in LCA and specifically the USEtox model” given on April 8 and 9 at DTU, which was also broadcast live via web streaming, has been recorded and is now available via video streaming any time for you or your colleagues to follow. Just as if you were participating directly via web (except the possibility to pose questions) you can see the slides, the presenter, and the chat window. Both, the slides in pdf format and the complete streaming of both days are available here:

 http://www.3r.env.dtu.dk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38

 The next occasion to follow the USEtox course as given on the second day of these two days will be in connection with the SETAC Europe Annual Meeting on Sunday 23rd of May in Seville, Spain. The registration to this event is handled by SETAC directly (http://seville.setac.eu/short_courses/?contentid=203&pr_id=180 course no. 10).

Comments and further suggestions should be directed to Ralph Rosenbaum at DTU.  Contact information can be found HERE