Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: A Systematic Literature Review through the Application Perspective, Indicators, and Methodologies

Sustainability has become a key factor in recent years. Countless methods have been developed to assess sustainability, such as the case of the Life Cycle Sustainability Analysis (LCSA). Thus, this article aims to identify and map the application of LCSA in the main scientific databases, through a process of bibliometric and systematic literature review. Therefore, a bibliographic portfolio that represents the publications of the LCSA was selected based on selection criteria, after which the bibliometric and systematic analyses were performed. The bibliometric analysis identified the temporal distribution of publications, journals, authors, and countries that contribute to the context, as well as a studies’ keyword analysis. The systematic analysis was carried out by verifying the types of studies present in the bibliographic portfolio, the economic sectors and countries of applied studies localization, the indicators and methodologies used to evaluate each sustainability dimension, and the main methodologies for results final analyses were also verified. The selected bibliographic portfolio consisted of 105 publications, corresponding to the period 2008–2019. The results show that developed countries have a greater number of publications. However, China stands out with the highest number of publications. Most of the studies in the portfolio are developments of methodologies and applications in case studies. The applied studies covered several economic and global localization sectors. Moreover, it was found that there is a great variability of environmental, economic, and social indicators employed, as well as methodologies for analyzing the final results. For example, the main indicators were: eutrophication and acidification; electricity and operating and maintenance costs, and employment; and multi-criteria decision analysis (MDCA) was the most widely used methodology. This research makes several new contributions, providing academics and professionals with an overview of the application of LCSA, through scientific indexes and the main approaches of publications, as well as the perspectives of new research.