ECOCLASS
ECOlogical and CLimatic ASsessment Software
v. 0.3
Currently, ECOCLASS is a software to assess the environmental impact of vehicles used in urban transport. It allows to compare various vehicle combinations e.g. on the way to the workplace, or to investigate how emissions change when a diesel-powered car is used instead of car running on petrol. Furthermore, the effects of changing the style of driving or the number of people traveling can be examined online.
Basically, ECOCLASS is an easy-to-use graphical front end to do life cycle analyses (LCA) of products. One of the main features of ECOCLASS compared to other LCA tools is the possibility to change the parameters that describe product utilization interactively, instead of being urged to build a completely new process. Available utilization processes are currently limited to urban transport vehicles, but can be easily extended to nearly anything. The LCA in ECOCLASS reports three emission categories (greenhouse gases, acidification potential, and tropospheric ozone precursors), which can be visualized in two different types of graphics... Results can be printed (via a web browser) and saved for further processing.
The aim of constructing ECOCLASS was to provide access to LCA tools for non-experts and laypersons unfamiliar with IT systems, which is hardly achieved by usual LCA systems. Simple usage and clearly structured user interface were design features. The feedback from users at the 2nd INNOCOPE workshop, where ECOCLASS has been applied, showed that these goals have mostly been achieved.
ECOCLASS employs the database of GEMIS 4.2, developed and maintained by the Öko-Institut. We are well aware that GEMIS contains a very comprehensive database, which requires simplifications in detail, and that there are programs that are much better suited for transport systems than GEMIS. However, while constructing ECOCLASS we wanted to be able to construct and calculate a wide range of product systems, which made GEMIS a good starting point. The current focus of ECOCLASS on transport systems merely expresses the evolution of the INNOCOPE pilot process and will be one of the first things to be changed in future versions of ECOCLASS.
ECOCLASS is written in Java an may be freely downloaded and used. Please be warned that this is still experimental software - use at your own risk! An overview on the development of ECOCLASS can be found in the changelog.
Prerequisite is a Java Runtime Environment compatible to J2SE 5.0 ("Java 1.5") of Sun Microsystems. To get ECOCLASS running on your computer you'll need to download two files: first the ECOCLASS version for your operating system (Windows or Linux), and second the 'database.jar' file:
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