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Summary

Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis

16

employees

13

publications

18

projects

As the global transition toward climate neutrality and resource efficiency accelerates, industries and policymakers face the urgent need for robust, forward-looking tools to guide sustainable decision-making. Key challenges include transitioning to circular economy models, integrating social and environmental dimensions into economic activities, and aligning innovation with sustainability targets such as the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Effective responses must go beyond data availability to deliver integrated approaches that assess the environmental, social and economic impact of products, technologies and policies over their full life cycle. Central to this effort is the development of meaningful, actionable metrics that guide sustainability decisions across diverse sectors and scales.

Mission

The Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment group supports industry, policy and society by developing science-based sustainability methodologies and computational tools for life cycle sustainability assessment. Building on its strong expertise in environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the group has expanded its scope to include social and economic dimensions alongside the enhanced simulation of industrial processes, providing a holistic view of sustainability performance.

Rooted in interdisciplinary research and stakeholder engagement, the group’s mission is to enable evidence-based decisions by combining advanced modelling techniques with real-world applicability. Its unique strength lies in the ability to translate complex sustainability challenges into practical tools that inform strategic planning, innovation pathways and regulatory frameworks.

Scope of expertise

The group’s core competency is environmental LCA, and this is expanded through complementary approaches such as social LCA, life-cycle costing, circular economy modelling and absolute sustainability assessment. This work leverages advanced methods like system dynamics, artificial intelligence and optimization techniques to address complex, multi-scale systems. 

A distinguishing feature of the group is its strong software development capabilities, enabling the design of customized, data-driven tools. These solutions are applied across diverse industries, from manufacturing and urban planning to nature-based solutions and sustainable finance.

The group contributes to a broad portfolio of European projects, particularly under Horizon Europe and related programmes. Activities include providing LCSA expertise, developing cross-cutting assessment frameworks, and building dedicated databases and digital tools. 

Key initiatives include:

These projects aim to operationalize circular and bio-based transitions through frameworks, business models and policy tools. 
 

  • BIOTRANSFORM focuses on regional transition to a circular bioeconomy, utilizing governance models, stakeholder engagement and transition pathways.
  • FRAMEwork examines socio-economic, political and cultural drivers and barriers to a bioeconomy in the EU and beyond through cross-national case studies, actor mapping and foresight tools.
  • CALIMERO addresses circular construction value chains by implementing circularity metrics, stakeholder co-creation, demonstration and temporally differentiated dynamic life-cycle assessment.
  • FUEL-UP explores the circular use of organic waste in agriculture and forestry through case studies, sustainability assessment and stakeholder co-design approaches.

 

These projects focus on developing LCA and related tools to assess environmental impact and support sustainable innovation. 

  • BIOPHENOM implements LCA-based phenotyping to develop sustainable crops through novel sustainability indicators and genotype-environment modeling techniques.
  • LCA4BIO aims to strengthen life-cycle assessment tools for bio-based systems by creating cross-sector LCA guidelines and biodiversity indicators, and engaging in policy co-design.
  • INDICATE II develops environmental and circularity indicators for policy and industry with frameworks aligned with SDGs and industry-relevant indicators. 

These projects emphasize sustainable building practices, circularity in construction and the integration of EPDs and LCA. CIRCUSTAIN promotes circular construction and LCA integration in practice through urban mining, BIM-LCA integration and regulatory alignment, and leverages the FLOREC software platform. Other projects focus on developing generic Environmental Product Declarations for building materials in Luxembourg using material flow analysis and scenario modelling, and ensuring compliance with EN standards for construction materials.

These projects create frameworks to guide decision-makers when implementing circular and sustainable strategies.

  • ECODEV connects product-level eco-design with broader policy mechanisms by creating bridges between micro-level tools and macro-level decision frameworks.
  • The INDICATE II project provides sustainable development goal-aligned indicators specifically tailored for EU policymakers through multi-scale policy analysis and collaborative co-creation processes with institutional stakeholders.

 

The group proposes specific data-driven software tools to tackle the challenges related to implementing nature-based solutions, forestry management and biodiversity evaluation in the following projects. 

  • NBenefit$ 3.0 offers holistic evaluation methodologies for nature-based solution implementations using system dynamics and data-driven approaches delivered through their proprietary SaaS platform.
  • Multisilva provides comprehensive environmental and economic evaluation tools for forestry management practices through a specialized Software as a Service solution that helps stakeholders optimize their forestry operations.

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