• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.1028-1032
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• 2005

Life cycle assessment(LCA) has been developed from the concept of life cycle thinking. Life cycle thinking implies that everyone in the whole chain of a product's life cycle, from cradle to grave, has a responsibility and a role to play, taking into account all the relevant external effects. LCA is an analytical tool for identifying environmental loads and assessing the environmental impact in the whole chain of a product's life cycle. In Europe and Japan, LCA and ecodesign study for railway industry have been actively carried out recently. However, LCA for railway industry in domestic is still infant. LCA is standardized in International Organization of Standardization(ISO), base on the ISO 14040 standards, 307 life cycle inventory(LCI) database for infrastructure and base materials have been established in total since 1999. Some of LCI database can use in performing LCA for trains and railway infrastructure, but still not enough to derive accurate LCA result. Therefore, railway oriented LCA methodology and LCI DB are needed to be developed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.455-455
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• 2021

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an environmental impact assessment tool has received increasing attention over the years. Unlike the water footprint (WF) and carbon footprint (CF) assessments whose focus is only on a single environmental aspect, the LCA systematically analyzes the different impacts along the entire life cycle, making possible the identification of potential environmental tradeoffs. In Korea, LCA has drawn much attention from both industry and academia since the mid-90s. However, the level of Korea-related LCA studies with respect to different sectors in the past 20 years has not been analyzed. This study, therefore, sought to assess the status of environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies in Korea, with a view to understanding the current level of sustainability reporting and identify potential research gaps. Online searches of English written articles published between 2000 and 2019 were conducted on Google, Google scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science databases using the Keywords "life cycle assessment", "lca", and "Korea." At the end of the search, about 88 LCA related studies were identified for Korea within the study period. Majority of these studies focused on the construction (49%) and energy (31%) sectors with fewer environmental studies on the transportation (9%), manufacturing (8%), agriculture (2%), and information and communication (1%) industries. Based on publication trend, results show that LCA studies in Korea have been on the rise in the past 20 years, even though the number of publications has not followed a constant pace. In comparison with the economic sectors of the country, reports show an inadequacy in the coverage of major industries of growing economic relevance like the tourism, health, and agriculture, suggesting a need to further increase and improve LCA related studies in these sectors.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.205-210
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• 2008

Life cycle assessment(LCA) is acknowledged as a valuable tool to quantify the environment impact of agricultural practice as well as final product(biodiesel) considering whole life cycle of the target product. As a preliminary research of LCA study for rapeseed(Brassica napus L.) biodiesel, the methodological issues which have to be regarded with high priority were dealt with. No life cycle inventory(LCI) based on local data are currently available for LCA of rapeseed cultivation, crushing, and conversion to rapeseed methyl ester(RME) in Korea. In this paper, the life cycle of rapeseed and methodological factors which have to be measured for building LCI of each process are provided and discussed, which are including seed, fertilizer, energy use in rapeseed cultivation environment; and crushing, RME conversion, and transportation in biodiesel production.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.353-358
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• 2004

In recent, the trends in national energy Policy are established in the context of the integrated risk estimation for various national electricity generating options. The approach takes account of health, environmental, economic, and social aspects of electricity generation systems. In the present work, nuclear, coal, and LNG sources are chosen because these hold more than 90% of national total electricity generation in a descending order. A life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used for comparing environmental impacts of these options during the life cycle such as construction, operation as well as disposal stages. Here, the LCA consists of life cycle inventory analysis, classification/selection process of impact categories, characterization process, and normalization process of each category. LCA can be an useful tool for environmental impact assessment of future national energy options. At the planning stage of future energy Policies, the results of LCA would be taken into consideration. According to data update at the construction and disposal stages, the LCA needs to be conducted iteratively.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.185-202
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• 2000

Uncertainty and variability in Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) have been significant key issues in LCA methodology with techniques in other research area such as social and political science. Variability is understood as stemming from inherent variations in the real world, while uncertainty comes from inaccurate measurements, lack of data, model assumptions, etc. Related articles in this issues were reviewed for classification, distinguish and elaboration of probabilistic/stochastic health risk analysis application in LCA. Concept of focal zone, streamlining technique, scenario modelling and Monte Carlo/Latin Hypercube risk analysis were applied to the uncertainty/variability analysis of health risk in LCA. These results show that this general framework of multi-disciplinary methodology between probabilistic health risk assessment and LCA was of benefit to decision making process by suppling information about input/output data sensitivity, health effect priority and health risk distribution. There should be further research needs for case study using this methodology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.722-727
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• 2007

Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) is a tool that quantifies the inputs and outputs, md evaluates the potential environmental impacts during the entire life cycle of a product, material and/or service. Inputs and outputs encompass the consumption of natural resources and emission of pollutants to the environment. One of the deficiencies of the conventional LCA methodology is that it does not consider time explicitly. In addition, there are problems associated with the temporal boundary in the normalization step of LCA. The objective of this study is to propose a new life cycle assessment method that considers time in LCA as called 'Time Load LCA'. Basically Time Load LCA is a method that divides environmental load in each life cycle stage by time duration in each life cycle stage. Time consideration in the proposed method indicated that the new LCA method not only renders new perspective on the environmental impacts of a product system but also rectifies inconsistency in temporal dimension of the normalization step. Basic premise of the time load LCA method is that same amount of load over a shorter time period would affect more seriously on the environment than over a longer time period. therefore, load per time is necessary for the assessment of an impact of the inventory parameters on the environment.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.193-198
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• 2005

According to the ISO 14040(1997), Life Cycle Assessment is not the tool only focusing on the emissions from the manufacturing processes of a product, but the tool also expressing environmental adverse impact quantitatively through products entire life cycle (i.e. raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life stage). Because the LCA for EMUs(Electrical Multiple Units), however, requires astronomical time and cost for collecting big amount of data. it is inevitable to bring in the simplified LCA methodology, In this study, we introduced standardized methodology of LCA in the world, and found appropriate S-LCA methodology for EMUs. Furthermore, we recommended how to evaluate the environmental impact of EMUs in detail and precisely, using the S-LCA.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

In recent days, global shipbuilding companies have been showing great interest in eco-friendly ship products and trying to reduce environmental pollution - harmful gas and dust in shipbuilding process. Following this trend, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to an application of shipyards layout. LCA is a technique used to assess environmental impacts during the life cycle of products and systems. Until now, LCA has been used through ISO 14040 in somewhat limited industries, such as Building Life Cycle Assessment. Thus, this study analyzes the shipyard layout planning framework and builds life cycle inventory along with the simulation model structure to evaluate environmental impacts.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.1969-1976
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• 2003

In the early phases of the product life cycle, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is recently used to support the decision-making for the product concepts, and the best alternative can be selected based on its estimated LCA and benefits. Both the lack of detailed information and time for a full LCA for a various range of design concepts need a new approach for the environmental analysis. This paper explores a new approximate LCA methodology for the product concepts by grouping products according to their environmental characteristics and by mapping product attributes into environmental impact driver (EID) index. The relationship is statistically verified by exploring the correlation between total impact indicator and energy impact category. Then, a neural network approach is developed to predict an approximate LCA of grouping products in conceptual design. Trained learning algorithms for the known characteristics of existing products will quickly give the result of LCA for newly designed products. The training is generalized by using product attributes for an EID in a group as well as another product attributes for the other EIDs in other groups. The neural network model with back propagation algorithm is used, and the results are compared with those of multiple regression analysis. The proposed approach does not replace the full LCA but it would give some useful guidelines for the design of environmentally conscious products in conceptual design phase.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.221-229
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• 2003

In the early phases of the product life cycle, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is recently used to support the decision-making fer the conceptual product design and the best alternative can be selected based on its estimated LCA and its benefits. Both the lack of detailed information and time for a full LCA fur a various range of design concepts need the new approach fer the environmental analysis. This paper suggests a novel approximate LCA methodology for the conceptual design stage by grouping products according to their environmental characteristics and by mapping product attributes into impact driver index. The relationship is statistically verified by exploring the correlation between total impact indicator and energy impact category. Then a neural network approach is developed to predict an approximate LCA of grouping products in conceptual design. Trained learning algorithms for the known characteristics of existing products will quickly give the result of LCA for new design products. The training is generalized by using product attributes for an ID in a group as well as another product attributes for another IDs in other groups. The neural network model with back propagation algorithm is used and the results are compared with those of multiple regression analysis. The proposed approach does not replace the full LCA but it would give some useful guidelines fer the design of environmentally conscious products in conceptual design phase.