PARENT SESSION

6E- Life-Cycle Management
Hall 2
1:45 PM - 3:30 PM, Monday, 28 April 2003
Chair: Saur, K.¹, ¹
Co-chair: Frankl, P.², ²

(MO2/11) Life cycle assessment of brownfield management.

Lesage, Pascal^{1, 2}, Deschênes, Louise^{1, 2}, Samson, Réjean^{1, 2}, ¹ CIRAIG - Interuniv. Ref. Center for the Life Cycle Analysis, Interpretation and Management of Products, Processes and Services, Montreal, Quebec, Canada² NSERC Industrial Chair in Site Remediation and Management, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

ABSTRACT- The environmental evaluation of urban contaminated sites (brownfields) has traditionally been limited to identifying and quantifying hazard and risk, and interventions have been focused on reducing the risk to an acceptable level. While necessary to ensure ecological health on the local scale (primary impacts), this approach disregards impacts associated with actual implementation of the brownfield management strategy (secondary impacts) and with resulting urban planning changes (tertiary impacts). In a current research project on environmental assessment of brownfield management, LCA has been identified as a method for integrating all these issues. Particularly, distinct LCA models are used for three environmental decision-making contexts concerning brownfield management: (1) development of the implementation strategy in "dig & haul" remediation projects; (2) choice between brownfield management options (e.g. no action, dig & haul) for a specific site; and (3) public policy development concerning environmentally sustainable brownfield management. Modelling choices, data quality goals and system boundaries are all considered application dependent. The three aforementioned types of impacts are evaluated using different types of data but similar environmental impact assessment models. For primary impacts, high quality site-specific data originating from the physico-chemical characterization is used to enter contaminant flows in the inventory model and develop low-uncertainty site-specific characterization factors for spatially differentiated LCIA methods. Secondary impacts are evaluated using usual LCA data sources for activities and from landfill models for long-term landfilled contaminant fate. LCI data for tertiary impacts rely on scenario development using urban development data and transport models. The development of an LCA protocol specially designed to address these multi-level kinds of impacts is presented.

Key words: risk assessment, life cycle assessment, brownfield remediation