How to Perform Life Cycle Assessment for Water Distribution Networks with Partly Unavailable Data

Data availability is a serious challenge for performing life cycle assessment (LCA) for water distribution networks (WDNs). In this context, data refer to two terms, including (a) inventory data in the LCA framework (i.e., primary and secondary) and (b) network data (i.e., lengths, diameters, and materials of pipes in networks). This paper investigated the possibility of performing a reliable environmental assessment for WDNs with incomplete inventory or unknown network data. For this purpose, a state-of-the-art inventory data set with uncertainty bandwidths was composed for the construction of WDNs. Applying LCA to two case studies and systematically overlooking data, the effects of data availability on results were evaluated. It was shown that by conducting LCA for WDNs with only the most essential data, the results are still meaningful. These findings and suggestions on the essential data make it feasible to conduct LCA for WDNs with unknown or incomplete data to explore potential aims for environmental improvements.