Improving life cycle assessment as a decision support tool using empirical data for multicriteria prioritization
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Energy systems are essential to society and play major roles in two of the greatest global challenges of our time: climate change and social inequity. Advancing environmentally sustainable and socially responsible energy transitions around the world will require solutions for complex interdisciplinary challenges. Additionally, multicriteria analysis methods are needed given the diverse set of social goals and expectations for energy projects. My dissertation addresses life cycle assessment (LCA) as an engineering decision support tool, using rigorous social science methods to derive and implement an approach to multicriteria optimization founded on empirical data about societal priorities. I argue that rigorous, transparent approaches to prioritizing across noncomparable impact categories in LCA is fundamental to making LCA an engineering method that is useful and robust enough to play a role in policy processes where life cycle evaluation is demanded by decision makers. Further, I argue that prioritization of impacts in multicriteria assessment is ultimately a question of values and, as such, should privilege society's values over those of individual decision makers or the expert community. My research shows that nontransparent prioritization in LCA exists and uses a case study of a community experiencing energy development to argue that value systems are extremely important to decision making. I argue that LCA can benefit from use of transparent intercategory weighting factors that reflect societal values, specifically by use of a set of empirical priority archetypes that can be used to test a decision's robustness under different value conditions.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Grubert, Emily |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (Stanford University) |
| Primary advisor | Algee-Hewitt, Mark |
| Primary advisor | Brandt, Adam (Adam R.) |
| Thesis advisor | Algee-Hewitt, Mark |
| Thesis advisor | Brandt, Adam (Adam R.) |
| Thesis advisor | Freyberg, David L |
| Thesis advisor | Lepech, Michael |
| Advisor | Freyberg, David L |
| Advisor | Lepech, Michael |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Emily Grubert. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Emily Grubert
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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