System Analysis of Digital Service System Perimeter and its Interdependencies in Life Cycle Assessment

Knowing how to assess the environmental footprint in all phases of the life cycle of digital systems/services is becoming an imperative, in view of their growing impact. Such systems evolving in a complex ecosystem, sharing multiple interactions between subsystems and/or stakeholders, makes it difficult to define their scope as well as their modeling. Several methods for quantitatively assessing the environmental impacts of digital systems/services exist within the life cycle assessment framework but remain siloed and non-standardized. Moreover, they do not consider the intrinsic characteristics of digital systems/services and their possible impact on the most appropriate methodological approach. We propose a system analysis of digital systems/services both based on the state of the art and on a generic modeling to cope with their complexity. Then, we analyze the identified related interdependencies regarding the life cycle assessment context.