The Appa LCA (Automatable, Portable and Parametric Life Cycle Assessment) framework has been developed to facilitate the use of screening LCA in any workflow or software, in the perspective of facilitating ecodesign initiatives. It aims to bring together the best of the LCA method, which is versatile, holistic and flexible, and the ad hoc impact assessment tools, which are easy to use and integrate. It is based on the creation and use of impact models, which can be seen as stand-alone, parametric and modular LCA templates that operate at the impact level, i.e. after the application of LCIA methods.

The main particularity of Appa LCA is that it divides the complexity of LCA into two different, asynchronous worlds, each with its own dedicated tool:

• The LCA practitioner world, addressed in the Appa Build package.
• The system designer world, addressed in the Appa Run package.

Appa Build produces impact models and offers several features that can be useful for an LCA practitioner. For example, Appa Build allows importing impact data from other LCA software in the perspective of using background datasets from any LCA database. Appa Run imports impact models and provides interfaces to run them easily from any workflow or software environment, as it is light, fast, requires only a few Python package dependencies with no major restrictions in terms of package versions and no LCA database dependencies.

Documentation of Appa LCA is hosted at: https://appalca.github.io/.