AWARE is the outcome of a consensus process mandated by the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative and organized by the WULCA working group. While the initial version of AWARE was already generated and provided on this site in 2015, continuous maintenance and technical support for the characterization factor dataset led to bug-fixes the following years as listed in the version table at Download AWARE Factors.
In 2025, AWARE2.0 was published (https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.70023) in an effort to increase data transparency and consistency, while alleviating some general limitations of the previous characterization factor dataset. AWARE2.0 explicitly considers the special cases of river deltas, inland sinks, and subdivided river basins and furthermore benefits from an improved representation of basin area, increased responsiveness of environmental water requirements to seasonal flow patterns, and a more appropriate water consumption definition.
AWARE2.0 was created by a smaller team than AWARE, intending to remain within the limits of the initial consensus while increasing methodological consistency, timeliness, and input data transparency. In the final stage of the project, the remaining co-authors of the main AWARE publication were consulted for their feedback.
Why use AWARE2.0?
1. More recent input data: While AWARE was calculated from 51 years average water availability ending in 2010,
with AWARE2.0, a 30 years long, more recent period is used.
2. Improved data consistency: While AWARE used two different models for calculating water availability and environmental water requirements, AWARE2.0 is entirely calculated from post-processed output of WaterGAP2.2e.
3. Several smaller improvements in the calculations: E.g., smoother environmental flow curves and more
realistic basin areas
These improvements together create a characterization factor dataset that better implements what the AWARE consensus aimed to represent: Characterization factors based on a watershed’s available water remaining after human and ecosystem requirements have been met (What is AWARE?).
To download AWARE or AWARE2.0, please visit the Download AWARE Factors page.
AWARE is not just available for download as a standalone Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method, it is as well provided in different LCIA methodologies (i.e., collections of LCIA methods covering different impact categories). Sometimes, these LCIA methodologies do not use the most current version of AWARE or they do not provide the best available resolutions, which makes it challenging to interpret their results. Here we aim to provide caveats for different LCIA methodologies and their interaction with Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) databases. These caveats might explain differences modelers find when comparing results obtained with different implementations of AWARE. This overview will always be incomplete and there is no guarantee for the correctness of the provided information. If you would like to contribute to this section, please do this via the contact form.