Session “Midpoint, endpoint or single score for decision-making?”—SETAC Europe 25th Annual Meeting May 5th, 2015

There is a strong demand for simple understandable and clear outcomes for decision support especially in policy context or in company managements. A debate is ongoing whether clarity and simplicity may be reached adopting endpoint or even single score methods. To contribute to this debate a session was organised about the use of midpoint, endpoint or single score for sound decision support. The session contained 10 presentations about different aspects of this topic and a 40 minute panel discussion at the end. Most authors that contributed to this SETAC Europe LCA session are convinced that in many cases there is a need of endpoint or single score assessment (and its transparent communication) for sound and effective decision support. It may be the better option than letting the decision makers choose the relevant impacts subjectively. But using endpoint or single score results does not mean that midpoint indicators give no valuable results. Even though endpoint or single score indicators can be very helpful for decision support, midpoint indicators are helpful in identifying measures for specific environmental concerns (e.g. climate change, acidification or water scarcity).

KAGY T;  DINKEL F;  FRISCHNECHT Rolf;  HUMBERT Sebastien;  LINBERG Jacob;  DE MESTER Steven;  PONSIOEN Tommie;  SALA Serenella;  SCHENKER Urs; 

2016-01-22

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

JRC97289

0948-3349,   

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-015-0998-0,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97289,   

10.1007/s11367-015-0998-0,