TracyML - A Modeling Language for Social Impacts of Product Life Cycles

In order to analyse the impacts of production and consumption on social sustainability, Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) has emerged as an extensive and promising, yet still young methodology. S-LCA captures the whole life cycle of a product and aims to include all relevant affected stakeholders. It therefore requires large amounts of data and produces likewise complex results, which makes the presentation of findings challenging. We argue that conceptual models make the complexity of S-LCA study results easier to handle. In particular, Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) support users in structuring and communicating a complex problem domain. This paper presents TracyML, a DSML which provides transparency of social impacts associated with a product’s life cycle. Special emphasis has been laid on the graphical notation and understandability of the resulting models. We have evaluated the utility of TracyML by performing interviews with domain experts.