Proposed life cycle assessment approach to estimate the environmental impact due to high altitude platform systems

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series Vol. 2716; no. 1; pp. 12038 - 12045
• Main Authors: Solazzo, M A, Travascio, L, Vozella, A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.03.2024
• Subjects: Airships; Configurations; Earth surface; Emergency management; High altitude; Industrial development; Life cycle analysis; Life cycle assessment; Remote sensing; Remote sensors; Sensors; Spatial data
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/2716/1/012038

Abstract The anthropic activities, starting from the early industrial development phases, are pointed-out as concurrent causes affecting the environmental conditions of planet Earth as well as people life quality. Evidences of these influences have been observed even in the remote territories like North and South poles. Every day news report about extreme meteorological events affecting vast geographical areas with heavy loss in terms of victims and damages to infrastructures. In these potential risk scenarios, it is extremely important to support emergency management with timely and accurate geo-spatial information and also to restore minimal communication services. In these severe conditions a relevant role may be played by High-Altitude Platform Systems (HAPS) operating at high altitudes, ranging from 17 to 22 kilometres, typically in the stratosphere, extending coverage for large areas and improving connectivity in remote or underserved areas, bridging the digital divide and providing connectivity to rural or isolated regions, carrying remote sensing instruments, such as imaging sensors or atmospheric sensors, to gather data about the Earth’s surface, weather patterns, or atmospheric conditions. To analyse their sustainability, the proposed work presents the definition of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for two distinct “lighter than air” configurations: an “innovative blimp airship” (IBA) and a classical blimp airship (CBA) as baseline. While IBA configuration is considered as an unmanned, the CBA airship is a manned configuration. The goal of this activity is to support the characterization and validation of the environmental contribution in terms of CO 2 emissions due to innovative technologies, concepts and industrial processes adopted for the development of such HAPS configurations. For this assessment SimaPro tool has been used. The applied methodology has adopted the ISO standards: ISO-14040:2006 and ISO-14044:2018 as guidelines to estimate the collectable benefits due to the adoption of innovative eco-design solutions. Specifically, this paper is focused on the identification of materials and on inventory development in order to support the LCA process.