Life-Cycle Cost-Benefit Analysis

The evaluation of costs and benefits in a structured approach provides significant information to develop business and government policy and assist in making decisions. A theoretically-sound, thorough, consistent, well-documented and science-based approach to cost-benefit analysis over a project’s or program’s expected duration or life cycle can address concerns about completeness or adequacy in its application as well as identify research needs on unquantified and unmonetized costs and benefits. A life-cycle assessment of a water well would start with the energy and emissions associated with extracting iron from ore or distillate chemicals from carbon fuels. Life-cycle cost analysis was introduced in the United States in 1960 for improvement of cost effectiveness of systems in the private sector. Several evaluation methods have been used to examine the economic effects of groundwater quality issues: impact analysis, life-cycle costing, cost-effectiveness evaluation and cost–benefit evaluation.