Inventory Data Collection Research Articles

How to Seize the Opportunities of New Technologies in Life Cycle Analysis Data Collection: A Case Study of the Dutch Dairy Farming Sector

Technologies such as blockchain, big data, and the Internet of Things provide new opportunities for improving and scaling up the collection of life cycle inventory (LCI) data. Unfortunately, not all new technologies are adopted, which means that their potential is not fully exploited. The objective of this case study is to show how technological innovations can contribute to the collection of data and the calculation of carbon footprints at a mass scale, but also that technology alone is not sufficient. Social innovation is needed in order to seize the opportunities that these new technologies can provide. The result of the case study is real-life, large-scale data collected from the entire Dutch dairy sector and the calculation of each individual farm’s carbon footprint. To achieve this, it was important to (1) identify how members of a community can contribute, (2) link their activities to the value it brings them, and (3) consider how to balance effort and result. The case study brought forward two key success factors in order to achieve this: (1) make it easy to integrate data collection in farmers’ daily work, and (2) show the benefits so that farmers are motivated to participate. The pragmatic approach described in the case study can also be applied to other situations in order to accelerate the adoption of new technologies, with the goal to improve data collection at scale and the availability of high-quality data.

Agroforestry parkland profiles in three climatic zones of Burkina Faso

Agroforestry plays an important role in food security and farmer’s resilience to climate change and variability in West Africa. However agroforestry parkland profile in the climatic zone in Burkina Faso are not well known. Therefore, agroforestry parkland profiles in three climatic zones of Burkina Faso were studied. Thirty (30) farmlands in each climatic zone representing about 35 ha were randomly selected on which systematic woody species inventory and dendrometry data collection was undertaken. Diameter classes’ distribution and agroforestry parkland typologies using Importance Value Index analysis were also done. The results showed 42, 31 and 34 woody species respectively in Sudanian, Sudan-Sahel and Sahel strict zones with corresponding density of 37, 30 and 35 trees/ha. Agroforestry parklands in Sudan-Sahel zone appeared to be unstable compared with the two others climatic zones. Mono-woody species parkland of Vitellaria paradoxa was observed in the Sudanian zone while multi-woody species parklands were observed in the Sudan-Sahel and Sahel strict zones. Both the density of trees/ha and the number of species constituting the agroforestry parklands have a direct impact of carbon sequestration potential. Taking in account agroforestry parklands profile is therefore determinant in evaluating smallholders’ farmers in potential benefit from carbon market in each climatic zone.Keywords: Parkland typology, woody species, density, smallholders.

In Situ Reference Datasets From the TropiSAR and AfriSAR Campaigns in Support of Upcoming Spaceborne Biomass Missions

Tropical forests are a key component of the global carbon cycle. Yet, there are still high uncertainties in forest carbon stock and flux estimates, notably because of their spatial and temporal variability across the tropics. Several upcoming spaceborne missions have been designed to address this gap. High-quality ground data are essential for accurate calibration/validation so that spaceborne biomass missions can reach their full potential in reducing uncertainties regarding forest carbon stocks and fluxes. The BIOMASS mission, a P -band SAR satellite from the European Space Agency (ESA), aims at improving carbon stock mapping and reducing uncertainty in the carbon fluxes from deforestation, forest degradation, and regrowth. In situ activities in support of the BIOMASS mission were carried out in French Guiana and Gabon during the TropiSAR and AfriSAR campaigns. During these campaigns, airborne P -band SAR, forest inventory, and lidar data were collected over six study sites. This paper describes the methods used for forest inventory and lidar data collection and analysis, and presents resulting plot estimates and aboveground biomass maps. These reference datasets along with intermediate products (e.g., canopy height models) can be accessed through ESA's Forest Observation System and the Dryad data repository and will be useful for BIOMASS but also to other spaceborne biomass missions such as GEDI, NISAR, and Tandem-L for calibration/validation purposes. During data quality control and analysis, prospects for reducing uncertainties have been identified, and this paper finishes with a series of recommendations for future tropical forest field campaigns to better serve the remote sensing community.

Integrating Life Cycle Inventory and Process Design Techniques for the Early Estimate of Energy and Material Consumption Data

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool to identify direct and indirect environmental burdens associated with products, processes and services. A critical phase of the LCA methodology is the collection of representative inventory data for the energy and material streams related to the production process. In the evaluation of new and emerging chemical processes, measured data are known only at laboratory scale and may have limited connection to the environmental footprint of the same process implemented at industrial scale. On the other hand, in the evaluation of processes already established at commercial scale, the availability of process data might be hampered by industrial confidentiality. In both cases, the integration of simple process design techniques in the LCA can contribute to overcome the lack of primary data, allowing a more correct quantification of the life cycle inventory. The present paper shows, through the review of case study examples, how simplified process design, modeling and simulation can support the LCA framework to provide a preliminary estimate of energy and material consumption data suitable for environmental assessment purposes. The discussed case studies illustrate the implementation of process design considerations to tackle availability issues of inventory data in different contexts. By evidencing the case-specific nature of the problem of preliminary conceptual process design, the study calls for a closer collaboration of process design experts and life cycle analysts in the green development of new products and processes.

Managing mangrove forests from the sky: Forest inventory using field data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery in the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, peninsular Malaysia

Abstract Retrieval of biophysical properties of mangrove vegetation (e.g. height and above ground biomass) has typically relied upon traditional forest inventory data collection methods. Recently, the availability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) with different types of sensors and capabilities has proliferated, opening the possibility to expand the methods to retrieve biophysical properties of vegetation. Focusing on the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve (MMFR) in Perak Province, Malaysia, this study aimed to investigate the use of UAV imagery for retrieving structural information on mangroves. We focused on a structurally complex 90-year-old protective forest zone and a simpler 15-year-old productive forest zone that had been silviculturally managed for charcoal production. The UAV data were acquired in June 2016. In the productive zone, the median tree stand heights retrieved from the UAV and field data were, respectively, 13.7 m and 14 m (no significant difference, p-value = .375). In the protective zone, the median tree stand heights retrieved from the UAV and field data were, respectively, 25.8 and 16.5 m (significant difference, p-value = .0001) taking into account only the upper canopy. The above ground biomass (AGB) in the productive zone was estimated at 217 Mg ha−1 using UAV data and 238 Mg ha−1 using ground inventory data. In the protective zone, the AGB was estimated at 210 Mg ha−1 using UAV data and 143 Mg ha−1 using ground inventory data, taking into account only upper canopy trees in both estimations. These observations suggested that UAV data were most useful for retrieving canopy height and biomass from forests that were relatively homogeneous and with a single dominant layer. A set of guidelines for enabling the use of UAV data for local management is presented, including suggestions as to how to use these data in combination with field observations to support management activities. This approach would be applicable in other regions where mangroves occur, particularly as these are environments that are often remote, inaccessible or difficult to work in.

The role of concrete compressive strength on the service life and life cycle of a RC structure: Case study

This paper aims to investigate if the concrete compressive strength could be used as an environmental strategy to increase the sustainability potential of a given RC structure. The main goal is to evaluate if increasing design concrete compressive strength would result a better balance between the amounts of steel and concrete, leading to a decrease of environmental impacts and construction costs, followed by an increase in RC structure service life and/or durability. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to quantify environmental impacts and embodied energy of three four-pavement commercial office-building designed with C25, C50, and C75 concrete. Service life has been assessed based on design criteria for durability. Results show that for the studied functional unit RC50 presents better results from the environmental and economical point of view. Despite the positive effects regarding durability, the impacts during material production, construction, and demolition proved that, for this case study, the use of RC75 is not economically nor environmentally advantageous when compared to RC50. This study is an evidence that materials choice and structural design parameters are extremely relevant with regard to the environmental impact and service life of reinforced concrete buildings. Results highlight the importance of the inventory data collection on the life cycle analysis.

A framework for increasing the availability of life cycle inventory data based on the role of multinational companies

PurposeThe aim of the paper is to assess the role and effectiveness of a proposed novel strategy for Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data collection in the food sector and associated supply chains. The study represents one of the first of its type and provides answers to some of the key questions regarding the data collection process developed, managed and implemented by a multinational food company across the supply chain.MethodsAn integrated LCI data collection process for confectionery products was developed and implemented by Nestlé, a multinational food company. Some of the key features includes (1) management and implementation by a multinational food company; (2) types of roles to manage, provide and facilitate data exchange; (3) procedures to identify key products, suppliers and customers; (4) LCI questionnaire and cover letter and (5) data quality management based on the pedigree matrix. Overall, the combined features in an integrated framework provide a new way of thinking about the collection of LCI data from the perspective of a multinational food company.Results and discussionThe integrated LCI collection framework spanned across 5 months and resulted in 87 new LCI datasets for confectionery products from raw material, primary resource use, emission and waste release data collected from suppliers across 19 countries. The data collected was found to be of medium to high quality compared with secondary data. However, for retailers and waste service companies, only partially completed questionnaires were returned. Some of the key challenges encountered during the collection and creation of data included lack of experience, identifying key actors, communication and technical language, commercial compromise, confidentiality protection and complexity of multi-tiered supplier systems. A range of recommendations are proposed to reconcile these challenges which include standardisation of environmental data from suppliers, concise and targeted LCI questionnaires and visualising complexity through drawings.ConclusionsThe integrated LCI data collection process and strategy has demonstrated the potential role of a multinational company to quickly engage and act as a strong enabler to unlock latent data for various aspects of the confectionery supply chain. Overall, it is recommended that the research findings serve as the foundations to transition towards a standardised procedure which can practically guide other multinational companies to considerably increase the availability of LCI data.

An analysis to understand how the shape of a concrete residential building influences its embodied energy and embodied carbon

The built environment is recognized as a major hotspot of resource use and environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used to assess the environmental impacts of construction products and buildings and a new trend is characterized by the application of LCA to larger systems such as neighborhoods during early design phases. Assessing urban development projects at the master-planning stage raises the issue of inventory data collection, especially for building materials which are reported to account for about 20% of primary energy consumption in buildings, and up to 45% of associated greenhouse gas emissions. Urban planners focus on the urban morphology and little information is known about the buildings characteristics apart from their general shape. This paper proposes a simplified model for the assessment of buildings embodied energy and embodied carbon in relation with urban planners’ design levers. The model relies on the decomposition of buildings into functional elements in order to be sensitive to the shape of the buildings. A detailed sensitivity analysis and contribution analysis of the model is conducted on two types of generic building forms, in order to investigate the influence of parameters relating to shape on the embodied energy and embodied carbon of a building. The sensitivity analysis shows that the parameters relating to shape (such as the dimension of the buildings) are more influential on the embodied energy and embodied carbon per square meter of building than the ones relating to the elements themselves (such as the wall thickness). The contribution analysis also brings evidence of the relation between the compactness factor and the embodied energy and embodied carbon of a building.

Utilization of Online Accounting Software As A Supplier Data Collection System At The Company

Practical data collection system and has a very good security needed by small companies and large companies because the development of a company is a success in storing and controlling data well. In the company there will definitely be suppliers for the smooth running of business or the undertakings of the business undertaken, with conditions like this company should not be mistaken in storing and controlling data suppliers so then needed online accounting software developed as a place for supplier data collection system that provides facilities to make new suppliers, add suppliers with import features, change / delete / archive supplier list and record the beginning balance of online debt that does not complicate the user. The purpose of this study is to direct the company to do a good inventory data collection. The research method used is field research techniques so that the system made to meet the needs of the company so the system created to facilitate the company in managing information suppliers owned.
 
 Keywords: ​Practical data ​Supplier , ​Online Accounting Software, Company.

Algorithm for Life Cycle Inventory of Medical Waste Treatment Technologies Emphasizing the Role of Treatment Efficiency

Treatment of infectious health care waste is a prerequisite to ensure environmental and public health protection. In case of infectious health care waste, treatment can be organised at (1) a centralised waste treatment company or (2) on-site at the health care institutions. The efficiency of the treatment process is defined through efficiency of infectious and pathogen agents destroyed during the process and thus ensured to not come into contact with the environment. However, from an all-inclusive perspective, the environmental effects of health care waste treatment technologies should also include those impacts generated at least during the operation of technologies. The current paper presents a life cycle inventory framework of three on-site health care waste treatment technologies with a special focus on life cycle inventory data collection incorporating the disinfection efficiency factor.

Updating highway asset inventory using airborne LiDAR

Abstract Highway assets, including traffic signs and signals, light poles, guardrails, and culverts, are essential components of transportation networks. They guide, warn, and protect drivers and regulate traffic. To manage and maintain the regular operation of the highway system, state departments of transportation (DOTs) need reliable and up-to-date information about the location and condition of highway features. Various techniques have been employed to collect highway inventory data. These techniques range from the simplest manual inventory method to methods that involve advanced technology, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR). The focus of this paper is to analyze the capability and strengths of airborne LiDAR in highway inventory data collection. A field experiment was conducted to collect airborne LiDAR data, and an ArcGIS-based workflow was proposed to process the data. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed workflow as well as the feasibility and high efficiency of airborne LiDAR for highway inventory data collection.

Waste Data Processing Algorithm in Singular Construction Activities: A Case Involving Implementation of NAVFAC P-405

Innovations in construction ‘time waste’ management are scarce. Construction delays are usually caused by time wastes at activity levels, and scholarly studies primarily don't deal in explaining waste at singular activity levels. Experience based heuristics play the most important role in fixing the duration of activities by managers. But, construction activities are prone to highly improbable and complex process flows, making heuristics unreliable. This happens due because the probabilities of construction uncertainties in one project being similar in forthcoming projects are meagerly low. Thus, the experience gained by the project management personnel over the years, may not be handy at predicting actual durations and costs of the forthcoming project with sufficient accuracy. The only practical solution would be a fixation of cost and time standards for singular construction activities based on the complete history of projects completed and those personnel involved in it. In a nutshell, it would mean globalizing or at least nationalizing heuristic data of delays and wastes in order to facilitate meaningful future predictions. This can be achieved by devising a mechanism of centralization of construction process related data into a single entity at the national/international level - Data Collection System (DCS). As part of this system, synchronization of personnel and construction site data should take place at every instance a new construction process is activated anywhere within the boundary of existing DCS. A collection of inventory data, material data, labor data, stakeholder data, activity delay data, time waste data, etc. should form the core data in this data center. Data obtained from heuristics should then be converted to mathematical distributions that could then be used for predictions in future construction scenarios. This would result in giving better and better results as the process of data entry proceeds. The scope of this study is limited to construction activities from Indian construction sites involving core and shell in buildings. “Cost overrun” in: (1) Beam and slab construction, (2) Column construction and, (3) Block work is mathematically modeled as probability distributions. US naval code NAVFAC P-405 is employed for site independent duration calculation. As part of this study, steps on using NAVFAC – 405 in calculating delays are explored in detail. Beta, Normal, and extreme value distributions were seen to fit cost overruns in these activities. This could then be entered into the DCS.

Impact assessment of energy-saving houses on environment in Thailand

The main purpose of this research is to assess the impact of four types of energy-saving houses on environment in terms of CO2 emission. In the tropical climate, House 1 is designed as an integration of modified Trombe wall and roof solar collector using concrete block and concrete tiles, House 2 is normally built by concrete blocks and concrete tiles, House 3 is built as usually found in Thailand by red clay bricks and concrete tiles, and House 4 is built with lightweight autoclave concrete blocks and well-insulated roof. All house model dimensions are 1.3 × 1.3 × 2.5 m3. The collection of inventory data is associated with the construction stage, average household electricity consumption, maintenance in the using stage, and energy usage in the demolition stage. Electricity for residential consumption is based on the temperature collected through the experimental data in each house in 1 year. Subsequently, the environmental performance is assessed by Impact 2002+ life cycle impact assessment methods. The result shows that House1 has the highest score in terms of energy and environmental performance which can reduce the amount of CO2 emission contributing to global warming even from the first year of operation.

More EPA oversight of waste disposal wells recommended

EPA has not sufficiently overseen a type of underground injection well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas production, says a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. These wells, which are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and managed by EPA or states, include some oil and gas recovery wells, disposal wells for oil and gas wastewater, and storage wells for liquid petroleum products. According to GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, EPA has not consistently collected enough information about inspections or enforcement activities “to assess whether the programs are effectively protecting underground sources of drinking water.” In its response to the report, EPA said oversight and data management were long-term challenges and that the agency is in the process of modernizing its well inventory and compliance data collection. GAO recommends that EPA require reporting of well-specific inspection data, clarify requirements for enforcement activity reporting, and

Improved Asset Management and Inventory Development through Sample Analysis and Vendor–Client Communication

AbstractThis study compared output from mobile inventory data collection vehicles to manually collected data techniques with a focus on two-way communications primarily through the submission of a sample data set to be analyzed prior to the submission of a full data set. The interim submittal and feedback to the vendors based on that resulted in a marked improvement in data quality for 5 of the 28 assets studied. After feedback, it is apparent that highway data collection vendors can accurately locate the vast majority of assets, with the primary exception being those that are occluded by vehicles or surrounding landscaping, such as those assets in the median. Along with the locations of assets, vendors showed promise at collecting many of the feature descriptions such as asset type and condition. Many of the elements (location, type, etc.) for a particular asset type that created collection difficulty were only problematic for a particular vendor, which suggests that further improvements may be achieved ...

Foamy polystyrene trays for fresh-meat packaging: Life-cycle inventory data collection and environmental impact assessment

Food packaging systems are designed to perform series of functions mainly aimed at containing and protecting foods during their shelf-lives. However, to perform those functions a package causes environmental impacts that affect food supply chains and that come from its life-cycle phases. Therefore, package design should be done based upon not only the issues of cost, food shelf-life and safety, as well as practicality, but also of environmental sustainability. For this purpose, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be applied in the packaging field with the aim of highlighting environmental hotspots and improvement potentials, thus enabling more eco-friendly products. In this context, an LCA of foamy polystyrene (PS) trays used for fresh meat packaging was performed here. The study highlighted that the highest environmental impacts come from PS-granule production and electricity consumption. In this regard, the authors underscored that there are no margins for improvement in the production of the granules and in the transport of the material inputs involved as well as of the trays to users. On the contrary, changing the energy source into a renewable one (by installing, for instance, a wind power plant) would enable a 14% damage reduction. In this way, the authors documented that alternative ways can be found for global environmental improvement of the system analysed and so for enhanced environmental sustainability of food packaging systems.

Overview of Sustainability Studies of CNC Machining and LAM of Stainless Steel

Laser additive manufacturing (LAM), known also as 3D printing, is a powder bed fusion (PBF) type of additive manufacturing (AM) technology used to fabricate metal parts out of metal powder. The development of the technology from building prototype parts to functional parts has increased remarkably in 2000s. LAM of metals is promising technology that offers new opportunities to manufacturing and to resource efficiency. However, there is only few published articles about its sustainability.Aim in this study was to create supply chain model of LAM and CNC machining and create a methodology to carry out a life cycle inventory (LCI) data collection for these techniques. The methodology of the study was literature review and scenario modeling. The acquisition of raw material, production phase and transportations were used as basis of comparison. The modelled scenarios were fictitious and created for industries, like aviation and healthcare that often require swift delivery as well as customized parts.The results of this study showed that the use of LAM offers a possibility to reduce downtime in supply chains of spare parts and reduce part inventory more effectively than CNC machining. Also the gap between customers and business is possible to be shortened with LAM thus offering a possibility to reduce emissions due to less transportation. The results also indicated weight reduction possibility with LAM due to optimized part geometry which allow lesser amount of metallic powder to be used in making parts.

Environmental Comparison of Metal Coating Processes

Taking into account the expected growth of the world's population and increasing welfare level in developing countries, the global energy and material resource demand can be expected to increase significantly. Therefore, the environmental burden per unit produced should be strongly reduced in order to assure a sustainable impact level [1,2]. This paper describes the environmental assessment and comparison of two alternative metal coating techniques: i.e. electrostatic powder coating and fluidized bed sintering. The paper starts with a general description of both investigated metal coating processes. Subsequently the life cycle inventory data collection effort is described and an environmental impact assessment is performed for both processes. The environmental performance of both processes is compared taking into account the differences in expected life time of both coatings. Finally, an overview of potential improvement measures is provided.

Environmental Comparison between a Hot Extrusion Process and Conventional Machining Processes through a Life Cycle Assessment Approach

Nowadays manufacturing technologies have to be evaluated not only for the technical features they can provide to products, but also considering the environmental perspective as well. As long as the technological feasibility of a given process is guaranteed, processes minimizing resources and energy consumption have to be selected for manufacturing. With respect to this topic, the research studies in the domain of metal processing technologies predominantly focus on conventional material removal processes as milling and turning. Despite some exceptions, many other non-machining technologies, such as metal forming processes, are still not well documented in terms of their energy and resource efficiency, and related environmental impact. In this paper, an environmental challenge between two traditional technologies is developed: the environmental performances of a partial hot extrusion process and of a turning processes are quantified and compared. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is implemented to properly analyze the considered processes. The material production step and the manufacturing phase to obtain a simple axy-symmetric aluminum component is considered for the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data collection step. Besides, the material and consumables usage and the consumed electrical power are measured in order to quantify the energy consumption of the manufacturing phase. Further, the environmental impacts related to the manufacturing of the extrusion dies and of the turning process are included in the analysis. The paper presents an early step of a wider research project aiming at identifying the greenest technologies as functions of given product features.

The development of a forestry geodatabase for natural forest management plans in Costa Rica

Forest management data is available for many tropical countries, representing a large and spatially rich source of tree level data. Over the past decade, we have collected and digitized over 1000 Costa Rican natural forest management plans, spanning 30years and spread out over approximately 26,700km2 along the country’s Atlantic coast, northern lowlands, and southern Pacific coast. In order to analyze this unique collection of tree inventory data we developed a system to ensure the standardization, quality control, and reliable management of the dataset. We developed a relational geodatabase, forming logical associations between and within the spatial and tabular components of the forest management data. In this study, we outline the data standardization procedures established to permit the comparison of data across time and space. Further, we describe quality checks built-into the database’s functionality to identify and reduce the presence of errors. The final customized forest management geodatabase efficiently stores a large and diverse dataset through the integration of logical relations, quality checks, and flexible data access across 32 tables and over 250,000 tree records. Through the use of quality tests, the database provides a means to improve overall data integrity and illustrates the magnitude, sources, and types of errors present in the initial dataset. Finally, the value of a comprehensive database for the management of forest data is demonstrated through an exploratory analysis of standardized tree taxonomic information. With this analysis, we begin to explore the potential strengths, weaknesses, and applications of forest management data for future ecological studies (e.g. species diversity assessment). For instance, although most of the forest management data (tree inventories and censuses) is collected using common names in the field, our standardization process has allowed us to depict trends similar to those found in ecological studies (e.g. dominant species for different ecosystems). Overall, our forestry geodatabase represents the most complete record of natural forest management practices in Costa Rica to date.