Ubiquitous Life Cycle Assessment (U-LCA): A Proposed Concept for Environmental and Social Impact Assessment of Industry 4.0

Smart manufacturing in an Industry 4.0 setting requires developing unique infrastructures for sensing, wired and wireless communications, cyber-space computations and information tracking. While an exponential growth in smart infrastructures may impose drastic burdens on the environment, the conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques are incapable of quantifying such impacts. Therefore, there is a gap between advances in the manufacturing domain and the environmental assessment field. The capabilities offered by smart manufacturing can be applied to LCA with the aim of providing advanced impact assessment, and decision-making mechanisms that match the needs of its manufacturing counterpart.