Edited by: Sangwon Suh, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States
Reviewed by: Sara Zanni, University of Bologna, Italy; Alin Emanuel Artene, Politehnica University of Timiṣoara, Romania
This article was submitted to Modeling and Optimization for Decision Support, a section of the journal Frontiers in Sustainability
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
The application of life cycle thinking for decision-making needs to be explored to mitigate the current challenges and solve the problems which can affect people's daily life. However, the debate about the combination of different life cycle tools is still open and several researchers face this issue with different methods.
Life cycle sustainability assessment, which usually combines life cycle assessment, life cycle costing and social life cycle assessment, can be used to measure the environmental, economic, and social performances of a system. However, it is still not clear how life cycle sustainability assessment can be used for decision-making:
How to develop policies based on the results determined by life cycle sustainability assessment?
How to improve the sustainability of a system based on its sustainability performances?
How to select the most sustainable option among different alternatives?
This Research Topic aims to disseminate advanced methods/models and the latest studies in the field of life cycle sustainability assessment for decision-making.
Studies focusing on different fields of sustainability and including new explorations in the agricultural sector have been considered, such as an application of information-sharing mechanisms with the aim to facilitate “from seed to consumer” analyses
What emerges is that life cycle sustainability assessments can be combined with the decision-making methods and stakeholders' opinions along the life cycle of product or processes. The models for assessing sustainability and analyzing different scenarios and options were used for agricultural applications but also for territorial management. Environmental impacts and their implication for stakeholders and decision-makers were assessed highlighting that measuring sustainability performance and using the results for decision-making can contribute to a more sustainable society.
The collected papers in this Research Topic can facilitate the scientists, researchers, engineers, and policymakers to understand the nexus between sustainability and decision-making. In addition, we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the Editorial team, all the authors of this Research Topic and our reviewers for their support and assistance.
ST: writing and original draft preparation. JR: writing, reviewing, and editing. MS: writing and validation. KZ: validation. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.