Improving data quality in LCA- management of data gap and data consistency

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is a tool to look at the overall environmental impacts of a product/process/service from the extraction of raw materials to the treatment of wastes and disposal of products themselves at the end. Given its holistic approach, the strength of the LCA methodology lies in the ability to identify any displacement of environmental impacts from both, an impact category to another one (e.g. from acidification to global warming) or a phase of the product to another one (e.g. from the production to the use phase). Such a methodology should consider all the processes and their sub-processes along the whole product's life cycle. This implies a lot of data to collect and manage. As it is costly, time consuming and sometimes simply not possible to collect all the specific data required, it is necessary to use life cycle inventory databases. A direct consequence is the use of less appropriate data, which means a possible loss in quality of the LCA study.