Design And Implementation Of Life Cycle Assessment Of Software System

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to evaluate the environmental effects of a product, process or an activity within the entire life cycle from raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, use and transportation to final disposition. It is a comprehensive and systematical method for evaluating the full environmental consequences of product systems which covers not only the interior of enterprises but also all social sectors. Therefore it is overall which demands the devotion of huge workload. The implementation of life cycle assessment requires a great quantity of data. On average a project of life cycle assessment needs as many as 100,000 data whose acquisition, analytics and classification cost a great deal of time and energy. The complexity of most life cycle assessment, variety of data sources and onerousness of data transactions mean that computer software would be an effective tool which can't only deal with data accurately and quickly but also store information for other use.Through research and design on the principle and methodology of life cycle assessment and life cycle assessment software system, we constitute a life cycle assessment software system (WHUE-LCA) for Chinese users, which is widely used and could-be-well-expanded.The main contents of our research include the following items:1, Systematical analytics and general frame design: Defining the development method of software system- structured software life cycle; Defining the development ideology-object oriented software development and introducing it briefly; Studying the principle and methodology of life cycle assessment; Elaborating on the principle of software development-accumulative assessment; Modularizing the software according to the methodology of life cycle assessment and designing the general frame of the software.2, Database design and implementation: Summarizing the development of related database; Classifying all the relevant data into four categories and explicating their modularization; Defining the data object accessing method-Active X provided by Visual Basic and introducing how ActiveX accesses database.3, Functional design and implementation: Designing the function of every module, user interface of forms, functions of every object in the forms, definitions of procedures and functions, public variants and interfaces of modules.4^ Demonstration of WHUE-LCA application: Carrying on the life cycle assessment of an automobile engine connection rod made of steel by using the WHUE-LCA. Firstly, building a new project. Secondly, imputing the goal and choosing the scope of LCA. Then keyboard inputting the data of every life stage in the scope. Finally, clicking the corresponding menu items to get the assessment result which is achieved by the software automatically.5> Putting forward to the conclusion and aspect and suggestion for the future research: The conclusion is that WHUE-LCA can achieve our initial goal and accomplish the whole LCA. Moreover, database store much life cycle assessment data of products and processes which make us convenient and reduce our workload when collecting data and comparing products of the same kinds.The future aspects for life cycle assessment computer system design are that collecting more and detailed basic data and consummating product database, referring to various methodologies based on ISO life cycle assessment criteria to provide users a wide scope of LCA methodology for multi-selection and compare the results from different methods, assessing the impact of pollutants of all life cycles, establishing powerful and comprehensive database to actualize transverse and longitudinal assessment of products and processes, presenting the result with more graphics and making the interfaces more friendly.