Nico Mumm from corsus takes part in the “Spring School 2024” on life cycle assessment in Canada

In May, life cycle assessment expert Nico Mumm from corsus took part in the renowned “Spring School 2024” of Départ de Sentier in cooperation with CIRAIG on “Advanced open source inventory modelling” in Quebec City, Canada. The training focused on advanced modelling techniques in life cycle assessment with open source tools.

At the training course, participants learnt the basics of Brightway and Premise, two of the leading open source tools for life cycle assessment. The development and application of advanced modelling techniques was also discussed in depth. Particular attention was paid to the conversion of life cycle inventories into product modelling systems, sensitivity analysis and the consideration of multiple types of uncertainty

During the first two days, participants took part in interactive teaching sessions supported by Jupyter notebooks. These included practical exercises and discussions on the topics covered. The following three days were spent working on projects in small groups, with each group being supported by an assistant. These projects made it possible to apply the concepts learnt. At the end of the week, the results were presented and discussed. The group work in which Nico Mumm was involved focussed on the automated generation of location-specific data sets for arable farming. The application developed makes it possible to merge statistical background data with specific user data and analyse it automatically. This supports the assessment of complex agricultural processes at corsus.

During the training, Nico Mumm, contact person for life cycle assessments at corsus, was able to gain valuable new insights that will be incorporated into future projects and help to ensure that life cycle assessments at corsus are always based on the latest scientific findings. Participation in the Spring School was organised in cooperation with the University of Augsburg, where Nico Mumm is doing his doctorate on “Marine Biodiversity in Life Cycle Assessment” as part of the bmbf-funded BioVal research project