The starting point for this thesis project is the increasing intense demands of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to improve the environmental performance of projects, i.e. theFive-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope project(FAST project) inChina. As a prevailing systematic and strategic assessment tool, LCA is used to evaluate and assess all environmental impacts of products, services and industrial processes from cradle to grave. It is also well recognized and practiced to achieve the goal of sustainability.

Following the increasing trend of sustainable development, the idea of conducting LCA technique is gaining more support from the governments, local authorities and institutes inChina. Still, recent researches have only focused on the technical issues of this tool as such, rather than the context it is involved in. To give a broader perspective instead, this thesis focuses on how to make the rankings and quantitative eco-files generated from LCAs be understood more effectively and easily by the decision makers. An effective and comprehensive map of life cycle assessment building on the results of life cycle assessment is presented.This map in this thesis is named as CLCA. Through ranking and mapping the complicated and recondite environmental performance information from the LCAs, a holistic and systematic view can be provided to the decision makers. Thus, to some extent, this CLCA approach can lend support to strategic decisions making and sustainable development.

For this purpose, literature on LCA and literature from relevant disciplines are reviewed. The empirical analysis of FAST project sheds light on that it is necessary to develop a new method that can contribute to convertingcomplicated and reconditedata into a comprehensive and visualized one. Therefore, a survey paper based on the literature review and empirical analysis is designed, distributed and collected. Some influential and necessary essentials of the LCA reports for the decision makers are picked out and summarized in accordance with the results of survey papers. This thesis concludes by presenting a new map of LCA reports and suggestions for further research.