Cities contribute to and are affected by several environmental pressures within and beyond city boundaries. Urban decision makers struggle to find environmentally sound strategies while respecting their obligation to provide the basis for a viable society. Methods to assess the environmental performance of cities beyond greenhouse gases either lack a holistic or multi-impact perspective which limits the informational value of recommendations for improvement. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is already seen as a promising tool to overcome this gap although research on LCA at city scale is still in its infancies. This paper introduces a novel approach for city-scale environmental decision support and extends the current methodological discussion to organizational LCA (OLCA). A four-step procedure was followed. Firstly, a universal city structure was developed by reviewing different city characteristics and by conducting a virtual case study. Secondly, this structure was split into assessment levels by a stakeholder analysis to reflect different levels of decision support. Thirdly, OLCA’s capabilities to cover the required assessment levels were evaluated. Lastly, methodological uncertainties were discussed, and the assessment framework was finalized by giving guidance on how to extend OLCA to city needs. An environmental assessment framework containing four assessment levels is proposed. Results show that OLCA is well suited to estimate potential environmental impacts associated with the provision of public services by the local government (level 1) and by contracted companies (level 2). Methodological challenges were encountered regarding the uncertain definition of the local government’s influence on private activities beyond public service provision (level 3a). Including activities that are neither directly nor indirectly influenced by the local government go beyond OLCA’s capabilities (level 3b). The framework proposed will support local governments in tracking their environmental performance, prioritizing mitigation measures, and considering transformational change in their strategic decisions. The organizational perspective makes OLCA a valuable approach for decision support at city level. This perspective, however, does not allow to capture all activities taking place within the city boundary and methods have to be found that adequately estimate a local government’s influence beyond public service provision. When aiming at developing long-term strategies to improve a city’s environmental performance, future availability of new technologies and business models that may further impact a local government’s influence need to be considered.

中文翻译：

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包含组织 LCA 的城市环境决策支持框架

城市促成并受城市边界内外的多种环境压力的影响。城市决策者努力寻找无害环境的战略，同时尊重他们为建立一个可行的社会提供基础的义务。评估除温室气体外的城市环境绩效的方法要么缺乏整体性或多影响视角，这限制了改进建议的信息价值。生命周期评估 (LCA) 已被视为克服这一差距的有前途的工具，尽管在城市范围内对 LCA 的研究仍处于起步阶段。本文介绍了一种新的城市规模环境决策支持方法，并将当前的方法论讨论扩展到组织 LCA (OLCA)。遵循四步程序。首先，通过审查不同的城市特征和进行虚拟案例研究，开发了一个通用的城市结构。其次，通过利益相关者分析将该结构分为评估级别，以反映不同级别的决策支持。第三，评估了 OLCA 涵盖所需评估级别的能力。最后，讨论了方法学的不确定性，并通过指导如何将 OLCA 扩展到城市需求来最终确定评估框架。提出了一个包含四个评估级别的环境评估框架。结果表明，OLCA 非常适合估计与地方政府（1 级）和承包公司（2 级）提供公共服务相关的潜在环境影响。关于地方政府对公共服务提供之外的私人活动的影响的不确定定义（3a 级），遇到了方法论上的挑战。包括不受当地政府直接或间接影响的活动超出了 OLCA 的能力（3b 级）。提议的框架将支持地方政府跟踪其环境绩效、确定缓解措施的优先顺序并考虑战略决策中的转型变革。组织视角使 OLCA 成为城市层面决策支持的宝贵方法。然而，这种观点并不能涵盖在城市边界内发生的所有活动，必须找到能够充分估计地方政府在公共服务提供之外的影响的方法。