A Knowledge Graph Framework for Impact Calculation in Life-Cycle Assessment

Sustainability assessments are increasingly critical for evaluating the environmental impacts of business activities. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a key methodology in measuring these impacts, but integrating and analyzing data from diverse enterprise data sources to compute LCA indicators remains a challenging task. In this paper, we propose an approach that leverages Knowledge Graphs to formally model LCA indicators and their associated mathematical calculation formulas. The graph serves as a flexible schema supporting enterprises in documentation and mathematical interpretation of indicators for LCA, by linking their internal data sources to the Graph. On top of it, a suite of reasoning-based services is presented to automate the calculation of indicators from available data sources through algebraic manipulation, and to facilitate collaboration among a network of enterprises by enabling consistent comparison of sustainability assessments.