Autodesk and Sustainable Minds are empowering companies to make more sustainable design decisions. With Inventor software for Digital Prototyping, Autodesk is helping take designers and engineers beyond 3D to address the most challenging environmental issues.
SM 2009 Impact Assessment Methodology
The science behind our software is a life cycle assessment methodology for evaluating potential ecological and human health impacts from products used in North America. The science and data is from trusted sources including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
SM 2009 includes more than 600 impact factors from across all product life cycle stages: materials, processes, use stage consumables, transportation and end of life.
Continually updated impact factors allow design teams to perform what-if comparisons based on 10 impact categories, or just global warming impacts, measured in CO2 equivalents.
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Ecological damage: global warming/carbon emissions, acid rain, eco-toxicity, ozone depletion, water eutrophication
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Human health damage: photochemical smog, human respiratory, human toxicity, and human carcinogens
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Resource depletion: fossil fuel depletion
1 Tool for reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts
For more information, visit the Learning Center.
2 United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2006
3 National Institute for Standards and Technology, 2006
SM 2009 uses TRACI1 impact categories developed by the U.S. EPA, North American normalization and weighting values developed by the EPA2 and NIST3 respectively, and process inventory data from the most credible sources worldwide.
SM 2009 was based originally on the Okala 2007 impact factors from the Okala curriculum guide. The guide was developed under the auspices of IDSA, through financial support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Design for the Environment Program, Eastman Chemical Company and the Whirlpool Corporation.
