4.3.2. Inventory Analysis

The major part of the information of the products or processes used to define the activities of the whole life-cycle of the bridge is obtained from Ecoinvent database [17]. In the case of the information of the products or processes needed for the environmental impact assessment that do not exist in the Ecoinvent database, the data will be created by means of the data obtained from the literature or the Bedec database [29].

The Ecoinvent database is one of the most complete databases for the construction sector and has been created and grown thanks to the information obtained from different institutions. It was created in 2004 through the efforts of the several Swiss Federal Offices and research institutes. That implies that the major part of the information existing in the first versions of Ecoinvent was obtained from Swiss institutions but later, data from other countries were inserted. In this case, the bridge is located on the eastern coast of Spain. In the Ecoinvent database there is no information about this region and therefore it is necessary to consider information about the products or processes from other regions that do not coincide exactly with the products or processes used on the eastern coast of Spain. That means that there is inconsistency between the real data and the data from the Ecoinvent database. For this reason, uncertainty is applied to the Ecoinvent data. The uncertainty is divided into two parts: the first part concerns the type of product or process [33] and the second part concerns the differences between the real data and the data considered by means of the pedigree matrix [34].
