Distributed information system for environmentally conscious process design

When we design a chemical process system, consideration of environmental impact is needed in addition to other conventional criteria. We need to introduce product lifecycle evaluation into the decision-making process, since changes in a single process indirectly influence the overall environmental impact throughout the entire lifecycle systems. However, product lifecycle evaluation brings several new difficulties. Data collection and estimation in the lifecycle system is a time- and cost-consuming process. Diversity of evaluation methodology is increasing, and they should be dynamically selected and integrated to reflect the decision-makers' strategy. In this paper, the current development of our information system, which supports product lifecycle evaluation in the course of process design activities, is presented. Our system aims to enable decision makers build their own lifecycle evaluation systems by integrating information services supplied over the network.