UAB ranks seventh worldwide in life cycle assessment
24/04/2015
A paper published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment has pointed out the importance the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has in the sector of environmental studies which applies the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment. This methodology allows calculating the environmental impact, such as CO2 emissions, of products, services and processes ranging from the extraction of raw materials and the production, transport and use phases to the final management of waste.
According to the paper published by Hou et al. (2015) “Mapping the scientific research on life cycle assessment: a bibliometric analysis”, the UAB ranks seventh among the top 30 centres in number of publications related to the subject of Life Cycle Assessment. At the UAB, the leading group in this field, as well as in industrial ecology, is the UAB research group Sostenipra. The group includes researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, as well as from IRTA and the company Inèdit Innovació.
It is worth highlighting that Spain is the second country in terms of publications (472) during the 1998-2013 period and with the highest number of collaborations with international centres, after the USA, which occupies first place with 1231 publications on Life Cycle Assessment. The paper highlights that the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine of London, as well as the Rovira i Virgili University, are all closely associated with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
The first centres of the ranking are the Technology University of Denmark; the University of California, Berkeley, USA; the University of Tokyo, Japan; the University of Michigan, USA and the ETH, Switzerland. The University of Santiago de Compostela occupies sixth place, the UAB seventh and the Rovira i Virgili University comes in eighth.
Therefore, these positions place the UAB within the world map of research in environmental and engineering sectors dedicating to implementing the Life Cycle Assessment. The research group Sostenipra is the world's leader in the implementation of eco-design methodology and includes a specific tool translated into French, English and Spanish.
More information:
Mapping the scientific research on life cycle assessment: a bibliometric analysis