Propagating uncertainty through coupling of agent-based modelling and life cycle assessment

Auteurs

Baustert P., Navarrete Gutiérrez T., Benetto E., Rasouli S.

Référence

Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 493, art. no. 144788, 2025

Description

The coupling of agent-based modelling (ABM) and life cycle assessment (LCA) has received substantial attention over the past couple of decades. The coupling brings value by integrating human behaviour at disaggregate level into LCA. ABM/LCA coupled models are probabilistic models for which the results need to be interpreted in light of uncertainties, however, the current practice still suffers from the lack of guidance. ABM and LCA have their own uncertainty classifications, which are not consistent with each other. The first contribution of the present work is the proposition of a new integrated uncertainty classification system, focusing on uncertainty locations. Secondly, three distinct uncertainty propagation schemes are proposed. Thirdly, the framework is applied to the Connecting model to evaluate the environmental impacts of various mobility scenarios. The results show that random variables in ABM only contribute marginally to the overall output uncertainty, while parameter uncertainty of LCA contribute substantially.

Lien

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2025.144788