EIO-LCA Web Forum

Hello, im doing an economic input-output LCA of Automotive vehicles in Taiwan and i would like to know if the EIO-LCA software developed by the carnegie mellon university can be used for my research. I mean, can eco nomic input-output data of Taiwan be used in the EIO-LCA software ? If yes, how can this be done?
I would also like to know if the sigma pro software can be used. If yes, please advice me about how to use it.
Thanks

ishq-

A few comments.

First, EIO-LCA is based on the US economy. If a particular sector is similar in Taiwan as in the US, it might be possible to use the model for your purposes. However generally you should be trying to use a Taiwan input-output model for such research.

Second, I have never used Simapro, and cannot comment on whether it can be used (however it is likely that the same comment above is valid - you should be looking for life cycle data from Taiwan).

Hope this helps.

would it be in anyway possible for us to replace the us IO in the software with IO of other countries?

In response to user ahamid:

Yes, in theory it would be possible for anyone to use what is published on the EIOLCA site to run an international model using an IO table from another country. However, several things would make this extremely difficult:
1) different sectoral classification systems in other nations--the US uses the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) for its IO tables, and this system is not directly transferable to any other country, except possibly Canada, and even then it's confusing
2) the environmental vectors used in the model are for the US only, and using the model with another country's IO table would only change the economic part of the model, not the environmental part.

thus, it's probably easier (and that's saying a lot) to work with original data from whatever country is of interest. (ie, original IO table and environmental data linked to IO sectors)

However, we at CMU are currently working on an international version of the model. However, it is not likely to be done for a couple of years. . . .
Hope this is helpful.
Chris Weber