Recovering resources from wastewater systems is increasingly being emphasised. Many technologies exist or are under development for recycling nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater to agriculture. Planning and design methodologies are needed to identify and deploy the most sustainable solutions in given contexts. For the environmental sustainability dimension, life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to assess environmental impact potentials of wastewater-based nutrient recycling alternatives, especially nitrogen and phosphorus recycling. This review aims to evaluate how well the LCA methodology has been adapted and applied for assessing opportunities of wastewater-based nutrient recycling in the form of monomineral, multimineral, nutrient solution and organic solid. We reviewed 65 LCA studies that considered nutrient recycling from wastewater for agricultural land application. We synthesised some of their insights and methodological practices, and discussed the future outlook of using LCA for wastewater-based nutrient recycling. In general, more studies suggested positive environmental outcomes from wastewater-based nutrient recycling, especially when chemical inputs are minimised, and source separation of human excreta is achieved. The review shows the need to improve methodological consistency (e.g., multifunctionality, fertiliser offset accounting, contaminant accounting), ensure transparency of inventory and methods, consider uncertainty in comparative LCA context, integrate up-to-date cross-disciplinary knowledge (e.g., agriculture science, soil science) into LCA models, and consider the localised impacts of recycled nutrient products. Many opportunities exist for applying LCA at various scales to support decisions on wastewater-based nutrient recycling - for instance, performing "product perspective" LCA on recycled nutrient products, integrating "process perspective" LCA with other systems approaches for selecting and optimising individual recovery processes, assessing emerging nutrient recovery technologies and integrated resource recovery systems, and conducting systems analysis at city, national and global level.

Tropical cyclones cause widespread damage in specific regions as a result of high winds and flooding. Direct impacts on commercial property and infrastructure can lead to production shortfalls. Further losses can occur if business continuity is lost through disrupted supply of intermediate inputs from, or distribution to, other businesses. Given that producers in modern economies are strongly interconnected, initially localised production shortfalls can ripple through upstream supply-chain networks and severely affect regional and wider national economies. In this paper, we use a comprehensive, highly disaggregated and recent multi-region input–output framework to analyse the negative impacts of Tropical Cyclone Debbie, which battered the north-eastern Australian coast in March 2017. In particular, we show how industries and regions that were not directly affected by storm and flood damage suffered significant job and income losses throughout upstream supply chains. Our results indicate that the disaster resulted in the direct loss of about 4802 full-time-equivalent jobs and AUD 1544 million of value added, and an additional indirect loss of 3685 jobs and AUD 659 million of value added. The rapid and detailed assessment of the economic impact of disasters is made possible by the timely data provision and collaborative environment facilitated by the Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab).