Decision Making Framework Using Probabilistic Pareto for Sustainable Packaging Life Cycle Assessment

摘要

The Packaging industry is one of the largest industries in the world and is associated with many environmental concerns. To reduce its environmental impacts, designing sustainable packaging has been one of the top priorities in packaging industries. A common tools for evaluating the environmental impact of a package design is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which provides information on environmental impacts for different indicators. However, making decisions based on the LCA results leaves us with major challenges. First, the LCA tools should consider various uncertainties such as measurement and data quality. Second, the LCA may give conflicting results on different environmental impact factors. To address these issues, a ranking based decision making framework is proposed in this paper. Within this framework a Probabilistic Pareto Selection method is introduced to select the Pareto Front with uncertainty first. Then, the Ranking based Rate of Substitution is implemented in the decision making process in order to select the best design options based on the trade-off of each Pareto design. Tow case studies are presented to demonstrate the functionality of this framework.