**2.2 Life cycle assessment**

The environmental impacts in the two scenarios were assessed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. LCA is a standardized (SIST EN ISO 14040:2006) and internationally recognized method for assessing the potential environmental impacts of the products or processes under study. The LCA method is often used to evaluate the environmental impacts of comparable technologies or processes. In this study, LCA was applied to compare the environmental performance of two scenarios related to the operation of winter road maintenance. The optimized operation was evaluated against the classical operation of the WRM vehicle during a particular snowstorm event. Holistic environmental benchmarking of two scenarios, which take into account also mobility of all road vehicles passing the road during the weather event, was the main goal of this LCA study.

The functional unit of the LCA is the operation of WRM vehicles due to a particular snowstorm event. The weather event lasted 10 hours and the snow cover reached a thickness of 25 cm. Alternatively, the functional unit can take into account also
