ABSTRACT
Looking at the picture of life-cycle and risk assessment methods that has been presented, it seems necessary to come to a spatial differentiation of life-cycles in order to facilitate a more integrated way of calculating environmental damage estimations in a chain perspective. In this way the poor accordance between impact potentials and actual impacts can be overcome in life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and the results can become more consistent with the risk assessment approach. Thus, another approach is needed that differentiates life-cycles according to the number of processes considered. This means using different levels of sophistication for different applications that are defined by their chain length.
