Criteria interaction modelling in the framework of LCA analysis

In this paper, we emphasize the possibility to aggregate evaluations by using different multi-criteria approaches and operators, actually more suitable for environmental problems. More precisely, values of different indicators, qualitative and quantitative, can be aggregate in a more flexible and efficient way, using operators not necessarily compensatory, allowing partial compensation and/or not transitive preferences, including also the very important possibility to model interactions among criteria. A single descriptor of multiple attributes, known as a composite indicator, can be used to reconcile apparently incommensurable criteria into a comparable basis, but the current aggregation and weighting practices in LCA are not sufficiently rigorous, because its methodological simplicity, usually being just weighted sums that implicitly require preference independence hypothesis and totally compensatory nature. We have explored different MCDA approaches in the literature that may be applied by LCA practitioners to enhance the technical credibility and also identify issues affecting the selection and implementation of a more appropriate aggregation approaches. In this direction, particularly attention can be devoted to some methods allowing the modelling of interaction, where suitable techniques can actually implemented in order to improve the validity of the results