Life cycle environmental impact of the telemonitoring system of the city of Martigny Switzerland

Nowadays, the urban utilities management is in real chaos. A systemic approach, defined by the researchers of the CREM as urbistics, can give to the public managers the tools for the sustainable city of tomorrow. Using microcomputers and the cabled TV network, the CREM manages a laboratory town at real scale. Every hour, various flows, like electricity, natural gas, district heating or drinking water are measured over 30 sites and visualized by a urban area network. This enable the urban utilities to better understand the consumption pattern and thus to improve the resources management. Nevertheless, the question was asked whether the environmental benefits of the management improvement overcome the impact of the necessary infrastructure of the monitoring. A life cycle environmental impact was performed to answer this question. In order to perform a first evaluation and to have the possibility to take into account the services, an input-output approach to life cycle assessment has been used. The first task was to inventory the necessary infrastructure and to determine the effects of the monitoring system. The direct impacts are negative and include the necessary infrastructure: computers, electricity consumption, research funding, etc.. The indirect impacts are mostly positive: resource management to enhance the efficiency of the network, avoided building of a water tank, possibility to dialog with the customers, etc.. The ecoindicator 99 coefficients were used to evaluate the environmental impact. All these coefficients were evaluated for both the necessary infrastructure and the avoided impacts of the monitoring. The results show that the avoided impacts are 3 to 25 times higher than the real impacts. More data are needed to decrease the uncertainty linked to the estimation made. More work is needed to overcome the difficulties encountered when evaluating the indirect effects and allocating them to the use of the monitoring system. The monitoring system set by the CREM together with the city of Martigny is very promising and could help cities on their way to sustainable development. In particular, it could be very useful for the development of new urban area.