PODlLCA Project Data: Transportation distances, environmental impact factors and emissions of freight in the U.S. global supply chains

Transportation in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) modeling is commonly represented using simplified, one-size-fits-all assumptions. However, empirical freight data show that transportation distances and associated environmental impacts vary significantly depending on material type, transportation mode, and regional infrastructure conditions. These variations can lead to substantial differences in results and are not well captured in conventional building sector LCA practice. To address this gap, this dataset provides data-driven, regionally informed transportation parameters for use in U.S.-based LCA modeling.
Environmental impacts were evaluated in OpenLCA (version 2.5.0) using the US EPA ISO21930-LCIA-US (v0.1) LCIA method. The USLCI repository was used to obtain inventory data using USLCI data. For transportation modes not available in USLCI at the time of dataset development, additional quantitative calculation methods were applied and documented in associated research materials.
This d..., Evaluation of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results from life cycle inventory (LCI) data was conducted using the open-source LCA software OpenLCA (version 2.4.0). To demonstrate the methods and framework described in the associated journal article, the five core impact assessment categories required by ISO 21930:2017 were selected for evaluation: 100-year global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), and photochemical oxidant creation potential (POCP). The US EPA ISO21930-LCIA-US (v0.1) LCIA method was used to evaluate these impact categories for product systems generated from Federal LCA Commons processes using OpenLCA.
, # PODlLCA Project Data: Transportation distances, environmental impact factors and emissions of freight in the U.S. global supply chains

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.n02v6wxbr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n02v6wxbr)

Supporting open-source methods, models, data, and a variety of tools for *the Parametric Open Data for Life Cycle Assessment (POD|LCA) Project. *For more information on the POD|LCA project, please visit [https://www.lifecyclelab.org/project/pod-lca/.”](https://www.lifecyclelab.org/project/pod-lca/.%E2%80%9D)

### Description of the data

This dataset provides transportation environmental impact factors to support modeling the environmental impact assessment of material transport imported to the United States.

The inputs are material types, origin FAF zones, and destination US states, mode of transportation, and efficiency of vehicle for foreign and domestic leg of transportation as well as backhaul factor pertaining to the domestic leg of transportation. Result..., ,