Ecometrics

LCA

Ecometrics Life Cycle Assessment methods perform environmental impact assessment to international ISO standards and enable the development and analysis of optimisation strategies aimed at reducing direct environmental impact and other forms of risk.

Utilising the globally trusted SimaPro software tools, Ecometrics’ standardised approach to LCA measurement means that results are transparent and transferable. LCA can identify the project/process hotspots that offer viable reduction of environmental impact and can support the comparison of a range of alternatives to aid selection of the most effective options.

Leets

Leets is a scenario based decision support tool for the planning, construction, operation and decommissioning of large projects across the infrastructure and utilities market.

Able to analyse direct economic costs and environmental impacts across the whole life cycle of an infrastructure scheme or an individual asset, product or process, Leets can be used to optimise cost effectiveness alongside potential environmental and social impacts while adhering to regulatory requirements

The Ecometrics Leets tool has an open architecture that allows systems and impacts to be specified according to the users’ needs and the most relevant to data sets and supports a collaborative working approach with comprehensive and unique knowledge management functionality.

Areas currently under development include: the use of social metrics and the integration of full life cycle costing information.

LCC

Ecometrics Life-Cycle Costing tools and methods ensure that whole life cost modelling and analysis is performed easily, rigorously and without omission. Equally suited to assessment of projects or processes, Ecometrics LCC incorporates costs from maintenance and unexpected events or failures - thereby informing and improving asset management. Ecometrics LCC can adapt to any preferred cost model, can include Monte Carlo analysis of probabilistic events and can create multiple scenarios for scheme optioneering.

Potential upgrades to the LCC application include:

• Modifying event probabilities based on the occurrence of other events e.g. a failure requiring hardware replacement will ‘reset the clock’ on planned replacement of that hardware
• Spatial representation of sites and assets, allowing more detailed assessment of hazard zones and hazard exposure.
• Automatic optimisation of a model given a set of constraints such as the project lifetime, the expected failure rate of the assets etc. This would calculate the optimal point in time to perform replacement or maintenance based on the upfront cost versus the probability of incurring costs through failure.
• The implementation of mutually exclusive events. These would be a set of events of which only one can occur in a single time period. If one occurs, the others have their probability effectively set to zero.

EcoPoint

EcoPoint is an ecodesign tool that can be quickly and easily applied to the product design process and enables rapid development and comparison of alternative solutions to design challenges. Ecopoint combines cost, energy and carbon assessment in one, easy to use tool.

Create and record evaluations that quantify the advantages or disadvantages of alternative materials and process, rapidly eliminating unrealistic options. Later, recorded evaluations can be recalled to evidence and support decisions made.

Value Chain Analysis

GnoSys is developing a Value Chain Analysis tool, designed to allow users to track multiple metrics through the multiple processes of a supply chain. Cost, Energy Usage and Water Usage are tracked by default, but other metrics can be defined by the user and will be tracked alongside the standard set. The tool provides the ability for users to investigate simultaneously the different impacts (economic, environmental and social) that the whole supply chain causes, and the effects that risks to the supply chain such as a shortage of one or more materials will have.

The tool will be provided as a web application (no need to install any software on the user’s computer). All data is stored on a server-side database and provided as and when the user requests it. Multiple supply chain models can be stored for use in the future.