Title
Integrating Urban Metabolism, Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment in the environmental evaluation of Santiago de Compostela
Date Issued
01 July 2018
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
García-Guaita F.
González-García S.
Moreira M.T.
Feijoo G.
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
Achieving urban sustainability has become imperative. The combination of Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) could be considered an attractive method to assess the sustainability of a city's metabolism. However, the need for exhaustive data makes this method time-consuming and uncertain. This study carries out a simplified UM-MFA-LCA analysis of the city of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) based on 7 primary flows. This approach allows: i) to determine the environmental profile of a city never before studied and ii) to determine whether a simplified analysis provides environmental impacts results similar to those of more complete studies – i.e. those in which other flows such as manufactures and building materials were also considered in the inventory data. The findings of this analysis report that the flows considered, combined with the MFA-LCA methodology, provide a ‘sufficiently accurate’ environmental impacts account when no further data is available. Furthermore, the results are highly disaggregated and a comprehensive environmental strategy plan for a city can be developed. The LCA results of Santiago de Compostela indicate that most of city's impact happens outside its limits. Direct emissions are also identified and a number of improvement measures are proposed for both cases.
Start page
569
End page
580
Volume
40
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Arquitectura y urbanismo Ingeniería ambiental y geológica
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85046746847
Source
Sustainable Cities and Society
ISSN of the container
22106707
Sponsor(s)
This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project ref. CTQ2016-75136- P) and by Xunta de Galicia (project ref. ED431F 2016/001). Dr. S. González-Garcia would like to express her gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity for financial support (Grant reference RYC-2014- 14984). Dr. Pedro Villanueva-Rey would like to thank the Galician Government for financial support (postdoctoral student grants programme). The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC 2013-032 as well as to CRETUS (AGRUP2015/02), co-funded by Xunta de Galicia and FEDER (EU). This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project ref. CTQ2016-75136- P) and by Xunta de Galicia (project ref. ED431F 2016/001). Dr. S. González-Garcia would like to express her gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity for financial support (Grant reference RYC-2014- 14984). Dr. Pedro Villanueva-Rey would like to thank the Galician Government for financial support (postdoctoral student grants programme). The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC 2013-032 as well as to CRETUS (AGRUP2015/02), co-funded by Xunta de Galicia and FEDER (EU).
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus