Hotspot Analysis: An introduction

With today’s global, complex value chains, how can you effectively identify, assess and address the most significant sustainability impacts, or “hotspots”, of your business in a way that provides reasonably accurate and robust information? If you’re a diverse company that sells many products, where would you begin? What exactly are the most significant impacts? Where within your business value chain do they lie? Which opportunities to improve sustainability will yield the greatest benefit? Within the business context, where should effort and investment be placed? Hotspots analysis is the tool of choice if you want to gain high-level insight on the most significant life cycle sustainability impacts and enable quick decision-making on actions to improve. Organizations may then elect to go deeper or broader on addressing these impacts using other tools (e.g., screening-level or full ISO-compliant LCA).  Hotspots analysis allows the user to rapidly assemble and analyze a wide range of information, blending both evidence-based data with common sense from expert judgment and stakeholder engagement.  

Jim Fava will describe what is hotspot analysis, why it is a valuable approach to help an organization focus and to identify actions, will illustrate its applications with a few examples, and will conclude with next steps.